Race And Racism In America Quotes

That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.

~ James Baldwin

What matter most is to complete the journey.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When you've grown up mis-educated, surrounded by fear and hate, unaware of your privilege, lies can sound like the truth.

~ Dashanne Stokes

...all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...

~ James Baldwin

Prejudice plunges you into a world of fear and hate. That's no way to live.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Discrimination does not 'make America great.' It makes America weak.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Electing a bigot enables further bigotry.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Racist legacy laws and modern racist practices are all part of the same system, and it needs to be changed now.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Acknowledging that all our land was stolen from Native people feels like too great a burden, so we create an alternative reality that allows us to disengage emotionally from the truth.

~ Daniel Hill

If origin defines race, then the entire human race is African.

~ Abhijit Naskar

When one attains self-knowledge, distinctions of race and religion vanish.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Only God can break through the variegated walls of skin to capture the one and only hue of the heart. One Blood.

~ Katelyne Parker

Divided we are as people but if we stand together and fight we as a race will unite.

~ Alcurtis Turner

The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else’s children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose.

~ Aberjhani

Bigotry lives not just in our words, but in our actions, thoughts, and institutions.

~ Dashanne Stokes

In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he'd never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed that Negroes had their own special kind of grieving ritual, another language, something other than tears they used to express their sadness.

~ Bebe Moore Campbell

In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

~ Octavia E. Butler

At Snortin' Reformatory, a notorious Washington, D.C. jail located in the northern Virginia suburbs, The Afro-Anarchists were being thrown into a cell. It was a situation that the three of them, like many young black males in the D.C. area, had long ago come to expect as a rite of passage. As the door slammed shut behind them, Bucktooth spoke. Man, Phosphate, they didn't read us our rights or nothin'. Yeah, Phos,” Fontaine chimed in, I didn't think they had to beat us, neither. And whoever heard of being charged with singing too loud and off-key in a public establishment? I don't believe there is no kind of law for that shit.

~ Donald Jeffries

If you'd combat bigotry, use honest language and call things out for what they really are.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Black people are not the descendants of kings. We are—and I say this with big pride—the progeny of slaves. If there’s any majesty in our struggle, it lies not in fairy tales but in those humble origins and the great distance we’ve traveled since. Ditto for the dreams of a separate but noble past. Cosby’s, and much of black America’s, conservative analysis flattens history and smooths over the wrinkles that have characterized black America since its inception.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

If you can't see past my name, you can't see me.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Bigots often like to say they're the ones being hurt as they oppress and hurt others. Never fall for the 'pity the privileged' routine.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Building bridges takes us further than building walls.

~ Dashanne Stokes

It's a scary world we live in when a person of color endorses a racist for president.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Discrimination is discrimination, even when people claim it's 'tradition.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Calling for an end to hate shouldn't be treated as a punishable offense.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Racism is dead only to those who've closed their eyes and ears to the whole world around them.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Tolstoy was a Caucasian, Gandhi was an Asian, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a Negro, yet all of their hearts were inspired by the one idea of nonviolent resistance. King received it from Gandhi, Gandhi received it from Tolstoy, and Tolstoy received it from Christ.

~ Abhijit Naskar

It is character that should be the sole measure of judgement in the society of thinking humanity, and nothing short of that would do.

~ Abhijit Naskar

If not as a true human, let me tell you as a Biologist, color of the skin does not define an individual’s intelligence – it does not define an individual’s ambitions - it does not define an individual’s dreams – and above all, it does not define an individual’s character.

~ Abhijit Naskar

In the biological sense, race does not exist.

~ Abhijit Naskar

I have no God to hold me up. And I believe that when they shatter the body they shatter everything, and I knew that all of us—Christians, Muslims, atheists—lived in this fear of this truth.

~ Ta-Nahisi Coates

Political correctness’ is a label the privileged often use to distract from their privilege and hate.

~ Dashanne Stokes

People often call fighting discrimination being 'PC' because they don't want their own unearned privileges challenged.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.

~ Aberjhani

The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.

~ Aberjhani

Why does God ask traumatized people to look at the trauma they initiated through their sin and rebellion? For the same reason God asks us to: it is the truth, and we are free only when we lift up the truth.

~ Daniel Hill