Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

~ Tim Wise

Tim Wise American Culture Black And White Black History George Zimmerman Hypocricy Privilege Race Relations Racism The Oj Simpson Trial Verdict Trayvon Martin White People White Privilege Willful Ignorance

...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

~ Tim Wise

Tim Wise American Culture Black And White Black History George Zimmerman Hypocricy Privilege Race Relations Racism Trayvon Martin White Privilege Willful Ignorance

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

W.e.b. Du Bois Black History Class Economy History Politics Power Race Race Relations Racism Reconstruction

Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue.

~ Shannon Celebi

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Race should be seen in one way, and one way only: on your marks, get set, go!

~ Anthony Marais

Anthony Marais Race Race Relations Racism

Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mindmost of our colors are amazingly the same.

~ Aberjhani

Aberjhani Anti Racism Coexistence Color Day To End Racism Diversity Ethnic Cultures Ethnic Groups Ethnicity Global Village Human Beings Human Family Human Rights Day Human Society Humanity Multicultural Multiculturalism Multiculturalismo People Police Reform Police Shootings Race Relations Racism Spirituality Teaching Diversity The Soul World Suicide Prevention Day Xenophobia

Race determines variables that yield results undesirable to one sector, while rendering a noticeable favor to others.

~ Lamont Renzo Bracy

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I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.

~ Kathryn Stockett

Kathryn Stockett Equal Rights Equality Race Relations Social Norms

America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.

~ Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center Ageism Aging Aging Population Aging Workforce American Culture American Dream American Politics American Population Conflict Demograghic Shifts Demographics Demographics Of United States Demographics Of Us Economics Gemographic Shift Generation Gap Generations Interdependence Population Problems Of Today Public Policy Race And Racism In America Race In America Race Relations Recession The American Dream U S Culture U S Politics U S Population Workforce

Some people say, What difference does it make what color the winemaker is that made the wine? Judge the wines off their own merit. Like, of course. And I do believe that my wine is judged off its own merit. But the fact is that when you walk into places and people can't believe that you're the principal or you're the owner or you made the wine, it's mind-blowing to me some days. It's like, wow. That's why we need to continue talking about it.

~ Andre Hueston Mack

Andre Hueston Mack African American Vintners African Americans Entrepreneurship Race Race Relations Sommelier Startups Wine Wine Business Winemakers

In the midst of combat, we learned a great deal about mankind and its many different races, creeds and beliefs.

~ Carlos Wallace

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Many of my ex-girlfriends were habitual half-asian daters. These women considered half-asian men 'exotic,' 'sexy,' and 'just-like-Keanu Reeves-in-the-Matrix. I consider these stereotypes appropriate because I got laid.

~ Kip Fulbeck

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Take the side of truth, you'll be right every time.

~ Katelyne Parker

Katelyne Parker Love Race Relations Truth Unity

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be white-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)

~ Cornel West

Cornel West Race Race Relations

Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding by both races--is the first step toward its solution.

~ Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson Great Migration Isabel Wilkerson Race Race Relations

J.W. and Roy didn’t just snatch the childhood away from Emmett, they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi.

~ Bernice L. Mcfadden

Bernice L. Mcfadden Mississippi Race Race America Race Relations

Pride is the problem. Everyone wants to be right so badly they overlook the rights of others.

~ Carlos Wallace

Carlos Wallace Carlos Wallace Race Race And Racism In America Race Relations Racism And Culture Racism In America Racism Quotes

You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.Or just find a white writer. White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn't threatening.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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The spectacle of the shooting suggest an event out of time, as if the killing of black people with white-supremacist justification interrupts anything other than regular television programming. But Dylan Storm Roof did not create himself from nothing. He as grown up with the rhetoric and orientation of racism.

~ Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward Race Race Relations Racism In America

I DREAM OF A CHARCOAL CHALKY AFRICAI am as black as charcoalBut that is only my skin colorI don’t need to see hacked white bodiesTo know that we are the same on the insideI feel the same anguish and disgust for the innocentMurdered black South Africans during apartheidMurdered white South Africans post-apartheidWe might not be there to fight apartheid era atrocities But we are here now and must prevent post-apartheid atrocities Murdering innocent whites will not bring back murdered blacksI challenge you to search online nowGoogle ‘South African farm murders’And see if you can look at the gruesome picturesOf innocent children, women and menDo we need more people to be horribly hacked to death?Before we stop the divisive rhetoric of the extreme left?We made a mistake letting apartheid drag on so longBut must we repeat that mistake with post-apartheid massacres?Some of these murdered whites fought against apartheidThese murdered children didn’t even know about apartheidDon’t take away your eyes now!No, don’t you dare take your eyes off those pictures!The real apartheid criminals are rich and well protectedKilling these innocent people is not justiceIt is inhuman; it is cowardice Don’t look away and don’t hold back the tearsIt is not only a cry for white victimsIt is not only a cry for black victimsIt is a cry for a better South AfricaA cry for a richer, charcoal, chalky Africa

~ Dauglas Dauglas

Dauglas Dauglas Africa Black And White Love Race Race Relations

It's no longer time to take sides for or against race, rather sides against those who still do.

~ Brian Spellman

Brian Spellman Race Race And Racism In America Race In America Race Relations

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective. Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture.Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference. Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation.

~ Joy Moore

Joy Moore Race Race And Christianity Race And Theology Race Issues Race Relations Racial Justice

Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it's bred indifference.

~ Barack Obama

Barack Obama Race Race Relations

She learned early on, in her adopted country, that race was an easy excuse to stop awkward explanations. People hesitated to probe into such a sensitive matter.

~ E. Journey

E. Journey Adopted Country Race Race Relations

Race is there. You're tire of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.

~ Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart Race Race Relations

There is nothing like race, is there?

~ Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde Race Race Relations

Ask anyone concerned with race to fast, and take note of the response you receive.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau Fasting Race Race Relations

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best — less trouble).

~ Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith Ethnicity Immigrants Immigration Race Race Relations

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like.

~ Raquel Cepeda

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At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity--like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view.

~ Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis Race Race Relations

The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.

~ Barack Obama

Barack Obama Race Relations Reflection

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates African Americans Blacks Consolations Myths Race Relations Slavery

Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

~ Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead African Americans Dignity Race Relations Slavery White People

Under the white population of the United States of America only the reactionary classes oppress the black population. Under no circumstance can they represent the workers, farmers and revolutionary intellectuals and other enlighted people who form the majority of the white population.

~ Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong Afro Americans Class Relations Race Relations Slavery

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to.

~ Colson Whitehead

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You ever think about the noose?''I been thinking about the noose since I was born.

~ Stacey Lee

Stacey Lee Annamae Lynching Noose Race Relations Runaway Sammy Slavery Stacey Lee Under A Painted Sky

I'm too old to be ignorant as I am. --Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality.

~ Elle Thornton

Elle Thornton Coming Of Age Historic Fiction Military History North Carolina Race Relations Young Adult Fiction

Sandra L. West and Aberjhani have compiled an encyclopedia that makes an important contribution to our need to know more about one of modern America’s truly significant artistic and cultural movements. It helps us to acknowledge the complexity of African American life at a time when the nation’s culture was taking on a recognizable shape, when race was becoming less of a crushing burden and more of a challenge to progressive people and their ideals, and when cities and their inhabitants symbolized the end of the past and the seductiveness of the new.

~ Clement Alexander Price

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It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.

~ Malcolm X

Malcolm X Coffee Integration Metaphor Race Relations

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).

~ Shirley Chisholm

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