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Whites Quotes

Browse 184 quotes about Whites.

Whites Quotes

“Among the working classes, in the next few months, there grew up a certain prejudice against all fellow workers who were exceedingly pale. The new Caucasians began to grow self-conscious and resent the curious gazes bestowed upon their lily-white countenances in all public places. They wrote indignant letters to the newspapers about the insults and discriminations to which they were increasingly becoming subjected. They protested vehemently against the effort on the part of employers to pay them less and on the part of the management of public institutions to segregate them.”

RacePrejudiceWhitesWhitenessSkin ColorPaleness
Book:Black No More
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“The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.”

LawRacismCivil RightsAfrican AmericansRace RelationsWhitesRacesPlessy V FergusonDissentsLegal Opinions
Author:John Marshall Harlan
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“I swear, I don't understand white people. Breadcrumbs on macaroni, kissing dogs on the mouth--" "Treating their dogs like they're their kids," I add. "Yeah!" says DeVante. "Purposely doing shit that could kill them, like bungee jumping." "Calling Target 'Tar-jay,' like that makes it fancier," says Seven. "Fuck," Chris mutters. "That's what my mom calls it." Seven and I bust out laughing.”

TargetAfrican AmericansBlacksStereotypesPetsWhitesMacaroni
Book:The Hate U Give
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“The reality of the Black colony within the United States is very complex. Dispersed as they are within a nation so chauvinistic that she likes to think of herself as master of the world, the blacks, who are oppressed by racism and indifference and threatened by an oрpressivе police and administration, have been forced to wage a very new type of fight. That is how the Black Panther Party was created: first of all to defend the rights of the colonized blacks inside the U.S.A., but also to synthesize new ways for blacks to struggle against white oppression. Faced with the vigor of their action and the accuracy of their political thinking, the whites--and especially the police--had a racial reaction almost immediately: as soon as the blacks proved that they were able to organize themselves, the whites rushed to discredit their organization.”

AmericaUnited StatesRacismOppressionAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesBlack Panther PartyBlack Panthers
Author:Jean Genet
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“In the last few weeks we have been provided with fresh examples of American hypocrisy. In Augusta, Georgia, six blacks were killed in racial violence that followed a protest against the inhuman conditions in the local jail. All of them were shot in the back, some as many as nine times, and possibly four were bystanders. At Jackson State College in Mississippi, highway police fired into a crowd of students, killing two and wounding nine. There is no evidence to prove the police claim that they were being fired on by snipers, but there is evidence which indicates that the police fired on the students with automatic weapons. And finally, there is the report from the Chicago grand jury that the killing of two Black Panthers last December did not result from a "shoot-out" between the Panthers and the police, as the police had claimed. All the available evidence points to a police ambush in which the Panthers were murdered. What are black Americans to think when such events are forgotten almost as soon as they happen, while the death of young white students is made into a national tragedy? The answer is obvious, and, sadly, it is one that we have known all along: that in America the life of a white person is considered to be more valuable than the life of a black person; that the killing of a white student thrusts a lance of grief through the heart of white America, while the killing of a black is condoned or rationalized on the grounds that blacks are violent and thus deserve to be killed, or that they have been persecuted for so long that somehow they have become "used to" death. My own feeling is that the word "racism" is thrown about too loosely these days, but considering what has happened in the last few weeks, I these days, but considering what has think it accurately describes much of what goes on "in white America.”

RaceRacismMurderBlacksBlack Lives MatterPolice BrutalityRace RelationsWhitesKent State
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“Rev. [Martin Luther] King continued, chanting, singing his prophetic litany. We were one people, indivisible in the sight of God, responsible to each other and for each other. We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive, must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into Life. His head was thrown back and his words rolled out with the rumbling of thunder. We had to pray without ceasing and work without tiring. We had to know evil will not forever stay on the throne. That right, dashed to the ground, will rise, rise again and again.”

LoveAmericaHateCivil RightsGood And EvilAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesMartin Luther King Jr
Book:The Heart of a Woman
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“A significant role, in this tense period of transition, is assigned to the moderates of the white South. Unfortunately today, the leadership of the white South is by and large in the hands of close-minded extremists. These persons gain prominence and power by the dissemination of false ideas, and by appealing to the deepest fears and hates within the human mind. But they do not speak for the South; of that I am convinced. They speak only for a willful and vocal minority.”

AmericaHateRaceLiesSouthCivil RightsRace RelationsWhitesAmerican SouthWhite Moderates
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“I don't hate white people. I hate the whole world for letting what happened to us go on the way it did. You telling me hundreds of years of torture and couldn't nobody stop it? And ain't nobody want to rectify it? Hell yeah, damn right I'm mad and I'll be mad forever, until the day I die, and even then I want them to set my coffin on fire so I can be mad in the afterlife. Because what happened to our people deserves that kind of mad. And if won't nobody else feel it, I'll goddamn feel it enough for everybody. That's my liberation.”

HateRaceAngerLiberationAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesInequity
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“There is a Ghanaian proverb that I’ve become very fond of over the years: “The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.” In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration to the highest office of one of the most powerful nations in the world, I’ve been turning this proverb around in my mind over and over again. The post-election day shock that has been echoing in the chambers of my life, my work, my social media circles has been telling. Something deeply private, like the filth in our homes, has been made public, and the shock, particularly among the white, liberal, educated classes – those most likely to survive when the house burns down – is revealing. Either many Americans did not know that the house was in disarray, or they knew but hoped that the disorder wouldn’t get out, be seen, like laundry shoved into a spare cupboard before the guests arrive. Here we are now, our dirty laundry visible and stinking and everywhere.”

HateRacismWhite SupremacyWhitesDonald TrumpPresidents
Author:Yaa Gyasi
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“Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader You despise, the racists said when the president Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too. Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty, Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs?”

HateStupidityNarcissismMasculinityAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesDonald TrumpBarack Obama
Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“It is understandable that the white community should fear the outbreak of riots. They are indefensible as weapons of struggle, and Negroes must sympathize with whites who feel menaced by them. Indeed, Negroes are themselves no less menaced, and those living in the ghetto always suffer most directly from the destructive turbulence of a riot. Yet the average white person also has a responsibility. He has to resist the impulse to seize upon the rioter as the exclusive villain. He has to rise up with indignation against his own municipal, state and national governments to demand that the necessary reforms be instituted which alone will protect him. If he reserves his resentment only for the Negro, he will be the victim by allowing those who have the greatest culpability to evade responsibility. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. There is no other answer. Constructive social change will bring certain tranquility; evasions will merely encourage turmoil. Negroes hold only one key to the double lock of peaceful change. The other is in the hands of the white community.”

PeaceJusticeResponsibilityCivil RightsReformAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesRiotsUprisings
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Fears of interracial sex and marriage have deep roots in the United States. The confluence of race and sex was a powerful force in dismantling Reconstruction after the Civil War, sustaining Jim Crow laws for a century and fueling divisive racial politics throughout the twentieth century. In the aftermath of slavery, the creation of a system of racial hierarchy and segregation was largely designed to prevent intimate relationships like Walter and Karen’s—relationships that were, in fact, legally prohibited by “anti-miscegenation statutes” (the word miscegenation came into use in the 1860s, when supporters of slavery coined the term to promote the fear of interracial sex and marriage and the race mixing that would result if slavery were abolished). For over a century, law enforcement officials in many Southern communities absolutely saw it as part of their duty to investigate and punish black men who had been intimate with white women.”

SexRaceMarriageRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesInterracial Marriage
Book:Just Mercy
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“There is another side to the picture: it is the white community of Montgomery, long led or intimidated by a few extremists, that finally turned in disgust on the perpetrators of crime in the name of segregation. The change should not be exaggerated. The White Citizens Council is still active. Confessed bombers still win their freedom in the courts. And opposition to integration is still the rule. Yet by the end of the bus struggle it was clear that the vast majority of Montgomery's whites preferred peace and law to the excesses performed in the name of segregation. And even though the many saw segregation as right because it was the tradition, there were always the courageous few who saw the injustice in segregation and fought against it side by side with the Negroes.”

ActivismIntegrationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationAlabamaWhitesMontgomeryMontgomery Bus Boycotts
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Negroes have proceeded from a premise that equality means what it says, and they have taken white Americans at their word when they talked of it as an objective. But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap—essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it. Most of the abrasions between Negroes and white liberals arise from this fact. White America is uneasy with injustice and for ten years it believed it was righting wrongs. The struggles were often bravely fought by fine people. The conscience of man flamed high in hours of peril. The days can never be forgotten when the brutalities at Selma caused thousands all over the land to rush to our side, heedless of danger and of differences in race, class and religion. After the march to Montgomery, there was a delay at the airport and several thousand demonstrators waited more than five hours, crowding together on the seats, the floors and the stairways of the terminal building. As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood. But these were the best of America, not all of America. Elsewhere the commitment was shallower. Conscience burned only dimly, and when atrocious behavior was curbed, the spirit settled easily into well-padded pockets of complacency. Justice at the deepest level had but few stalwart champions. A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.”

JusticeRaceInjusticeEqualityActivismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesActivists
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Many of our white brothers misunderstand this fact because many of them fail to interpret correctly the nature of the Negro Revolution. Some believe that it is the work of skilled agitators who have the power to raise or lower the floodgates at will. Such a movement, maneuverable by a talented few, would not be a genuine revolution. This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals--the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations. In this time and circumstance, no leader or set of leaders could have acted as ringmasters, whipping a whole race out of purring contentment into leonine courage and action. If such credit is to be given to any single group, it might well go to the segregationists, who, with their callous and cynical code, helped to arouse and ignite the righteous wrath of the Negro.”

RacismActivismCivil RightsProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationWhitesAgitators
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.”

UnderstandingRacismInjusticeActivismAfrican AmericansBlacksModeratesWhitesWhite Moderates
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“If anyone had questioned how deeply the summer's activities had penetrated the consciousness of white America, the answer was evident in the treatment accorded the March on Washington by all the media of communication. Normally Negro activities are the object of attention in the press only when they are likely to lead to some dramatic outbreak, or possess some bizarre quality. The March was the first organized Negro operation which was accorded respect and coverage commensurate with its importance. The millions who viewed it on television were seeing an event historic not only because of the subject, but because it was being brought into their homes. Millions of white Americans, for the first time, had a clear, long look at Negroes engaged in a serious occupation. For the first time millions listened to the informed and thoughtful words of Negro spokesmen, from all walks of life. The stereotype of the Negro suffered a heavy blow. This was evident in some of the comment, which reflected surprise at the dignity, the organization and even the wearing apparel and friendly spirit of the participants. If the press had expected something akin to a minstrel show, or a brawl, or a comic display of odd clothes and bad manners, they were disappointed. A great deal has been said about a dialogue between Negro and white. Genuinely to achieve it requires that all the media of communication open their channels wide as they did on that radiant August day. As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. And every dedicated American could be proud that a dynamic experience of democracy in his nation's capital had been made visible to the world.”

DemocracyMediaNewsActivismProtestAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesMarch On Washington
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“It's 1963: we're in the year of prophetic fulfillment. The last revival meeting is at hand, where the sons took up the cross of the fathers. White sons went forth to the dirt roads of Georgia and Alabama to prove to their fathers that the melting pot could still melt. "Negro" sons went forth to the Woolworths and Grants and Greyhounds of America to prove to their fathers that they could eat and sit and ride as well in the front as in the back, as well seated as standing.”

RaceActivismCivil RightsProtestBlacksSegregationRace RelationsCivil Rights MovementWhites1963
Book:Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
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