Racism In America Quotes

“Has racial justice improved? Have we moved on from Reconstruction and Jim Crow? Been lifted by Martin and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It seems that whenever we take two steps forward, we take a step back . . .”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Can a black man succeed today beyond his wildest imagination? Can he experience the so-called American dream? Sure he can! He can overcome bigotry and societal views and ideas that stand in his way. But that doesn’t mean that he, unlike his white counterpart, doesn’t have to rise above adverse societal views and bigotry. . .”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace.”
― Frederick Douglass

“No white person could possibly understand what it is like to be black in America, even someone like me, a descendant of Holocaust victims and survivors.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Lawsuits hold these bastards accountable and make the world safer. Of course, you disagree; everyone you represent is innocent. Is that what you’re suggesting?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Is this a racial thing, a gun thing, or both?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“I’ve been a lawyer in Detroit for a lot of years. I’ve seen the system up close and personal. I’ve seen the charging differences, the sentencing differences, blacks in white towns harassed and pulled over for the crime of simply being there and being black.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“A lot of people want to skip ahead to the finish line of racial harmony. Past all this unpleasantness to a place where all wounds are healed and the past is laid to rest.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“I remember reading a novel once that said the native Alaskans who came in contact with the white missionaries thought, at first, they were ghosts. And why shouldn't they have thought that? Like ghosts, white people move effortlessly through through boundaries and borders. Like ghosts, we can be anywhere we want to be.”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Most of us think the word racism is synonymous with prejudice. But racism is more than just discrimination based on skin color. It's also about who has institutional power. Just as racism creates disadvantages for people of color that makes success harder to achieve, it also gives advantages to white people that makes success easier to achieve. It's hard to see those advantages, much less own up to them. And that, I realized, was why I had to write this book. When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they have enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits.”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Reconciliation is the pursuit of the impossible -
and upside-down world where those who are powerful have relinquished that power to the margins”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“If Jesus came back today, Republicans would stop him at the border.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert

“If you ask Denny, he will tell you: "I'm a patriot. I love my country." A country that doesn't love him back. Doesn't love him black. A patriot. Let that register. A black patriot. In a country that won't acknowledge that Black Lives Matter.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“In the midst of a national reckoning on race relations in America something extraordinary is happening. We are building a winning edge against divisiveness and racism by standing up for what is right and showing that we are braver and stronger together. ”
― Germany Kent

“Racial equality is a prize worth fighting for. ”
― Germany Kent

“At present we are facing two pandemics in the United States. The first is the coronavirus and the other is racism.”
― Germany Kent

“One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slave holder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave holder is patriotism á la carte.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“The graphic photographs of Emmett Till’s brutalized body after it was retrieved three days later, flashed across the screen,” says Baker. “I sprang off the couch and screamed ‘No!’ It was the immediate and universal anguish every mother feels at the sight of such cruelty to a child. My heart was broken wide open, and from that moment, I began reviewing how, decade by decade, I had unconsciously been consuming racism my whole life. I read and wrote and read and wrote. And that was the beginning of my journey.”
― Carolyn L. Baker

“Cars slowed down as they passed. White drivers with white passengers. White parents with white children, watching. Not seeing, I imagine, three innocent black boys being harassed by racist police officers. Seeing three black criminals being brought to justice. Young minds being shaped into wrong thinking. Generational ignorance being reinforced through misconstrued observation.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“Give me my brother. You can keep your friends.”
― Daniel Abbott, Wounds

“Our anger is not about bitterness or hatred. It is about the desire for equality and justice. It’s about wanting racism to end. We’re tired of suffering and want to know what equality, dignity and respect feel like before we die. We’re angry because we have played by the rules, done more than what was asked of us, but have still been dehumanized and denied our place in time. Our anger is justified and whites should be as angry about these injustices as we are. We’re frustrated that they are not. If they were, things would change.”
― Pocahontas Gertler, While I Run This Race

“I am an old woman now and it pains me to know that I shall die never having known what it feels like to have my full humanity recognized by my country.”
― Pocahontas Gertler, While I Run This Race

“The Southern Negro will not tell the white man the truth. He long ago learned that if he speaks a truth unpleasing to the white, the white will make life miserable for him”
― John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

“I told them good night and returned to my room, less lonely and warmed by the brief contact with others like me who felt the need to be reassured that an eye could show something besides suspicion or hate”
― John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

“Racist ideas clouded the discrimination , rationalized the racial disparities, defined the enslaved, as opposed to the enslavers, as the problem people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“But those who demand the smoking gun of a racial slur or swastika or burning cross before they will believe that an individual encounter with the police might be about race are ignoring what we know and what the numbers are bearing out: something is going on and it is not right. We are being targeted.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant. That’s like saying they were drunk. Or constipated. Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out, cutting his nuts off, the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do? Too constipated to do? And more to the point, how come Negroes, the craziest, most ignorant people in America, don’t get that crazy and that ignorant? No. White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome an unnatural enemy.”

“What about the nice ones? Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.”

“That just means there are one or two natural ones. But they haven’t been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn’t stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn’t stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on. So will we.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Only racists claim Trump is not a racist. They're trying to trick you into voting for him.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America

“Something was making poor people poor, according to this idea. And it was welfare. Welfare "transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it," U.S. senator Barry Goldwater wrote in The Conscience of the Conservative in 1960. Goldwater and his ideological descendants said little to nothing about rich White people who depended on the welfare of inheritances, tax cuts, government contracts, hookups, and bailouts.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Nazis murdered Jews because Hitler told them that a global Jewish conspiracy was trying to exterminate white Germans and destroy Germany. Trump and his accomplices tell MAGA minions exactly the same lies about liberals.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America