Race Quotes

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.”“And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?”“We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?”“Of course I am. Don’t you see me?”“Because we have her in custody. You don’t have to be afraid.”“I’m not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She’s the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What’s wrong with you?”The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia’s driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.Marcia glanced at me then. We’d spent hours together but it was as if she hadn’t really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway.

~ Walter Mosley

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

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

P44- in tarzans clever little mind many thoughts revolved and back of these was his divine power of reason.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it

~ Alice Walker

The media will mess your way of thinking up, don't take they word for nothing do your on research.

~ Alcurtis Turner

Minority conservatives hold a special place of gutter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person of color rejecting identity politics.

~ Michelle Malkin

The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence. They had not read her blog but they had heard that she was a “leading blogger” about race.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

People run away from the love game because they know they won't win the race.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I wondered if whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had caught it. I imagined this “condition” affected the way I walked, talked, dressed, danced, and at its most advanced stage, the way I looked at the world and at other people.

~ Danzy Senna

Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back... The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time...

~ Nalo Hopkinson

Skin color doesn't make you different,' Melody said. 'We're all the same on the inside.' 'The only people who ever say that,' Raymon replied, 'are white.

~ Jodi Picoult

Trying to be white? What the hell does that mean? I've never understood that. How could anyone be white when they aren't white? Seems like a simple enough thing to prove, right? Hold out your arm next to someone else's arm and do a simple swatch test. Of course, what people mean when they say that is that there's some kind of authentic black experience that the accused isn't properly expressing. But what is the authentic experience? Clothes that wannabe gangbangers wear on the street? Hood style? What's authentic about that? For that matter, is fashion even a good marker of authenticity or race, anyway? Aren't clothes a second skin you wear over your real skin to obscure who you really are? Can they also express who you really are?

~ Ahmir Questlove Thompson

Yeah, Mel! If she shoves you again, smack her in the face! bellowed Mika.Kira glared at Mika. I mean, beat her in the race!

~ Katie Mattie

The perpetrator is a person. He’s got blood flowing in his or her veins. Does it matter if he or she is Black or White? What does it count if the perpetrator is Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or what have you? Does the person’s sexuality matter? Does it matter if the villain is Conservative or Lib Dem?

~ S.a. David

The Jews could be put down very plausible as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

~ H.l. Mencken

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

I've always wanted to race cars, even since I was a young boy, as I think a lot of guys have.

~ Paul Walker

[Jesus Christ] used to have blue eyes but I painted them brown like mine and everybody’s, to make him normal.

~ Noviolet Bulawayo

Mick had once come across one of Wilson't books and was surprised to see his face on the back cover. Mick was even more surprised when he read the book. It was pretty good, although Mick was kind of tired of hearing about Indians. Still, Mick thought, Aristotle Little Hawk was a good Indian, even if he was just some character in a book. He wished more Indians like Little Hawk hung out in the bar. He knew Wilson claimed he had some Indian blood, said so inside the book. But Mick did not buy that shit. Mick's great-grandmother was a little bit Indian, but that did not make him Indian. Besides, who the hell would want to be Indian when you could just as easily be white?

~ Sherman Alexie

The USPS is the only place in the world where you will find a black guy, a white guy, and a hispanic guy playing Filipino poker! And we love it that way!

~ Rhoda D'ettore

At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger.

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

It’s almost like that’s the definition of being American: You love becoming Irish for a day, or becoming Italian… Or becoming a Negro for four years.

~ Josh Alan Friedman

Conversely, the red plant itself burns a brighter red when set off by the green than when it grows among its peers. In the bed I always reserved for poinsettia seedlings, there was little to distinguish one plant from its neighbours. My poinsettia did not turn scarlet until I planted it in new surroundings. Colour is not something one has, colour is bestowed on one by others.

~ Arthur Japin

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

~ Kiese Laymon

I wanted to drag them all out, flay us all, destroy all the artificial separations of history. You'd merely done what I had, after all--split from two cells into four then eight then sixteen until you've accumulated all your arms and legs and organs and pushed yourself into the world--so fucking what? You honkey, nigger, spic, dyke, cunt. If I cry out, who will hear me?

~ Kelly J. Cogswell

That's what a man is supposed to do for his wife. Listen, if a nigger didn't get lynched every now and then, well, there's just no telling what they'd do to us.Who? Lily asked.Why, honey, the niggers and our husbands both. I don't care what color they are; men build up steam. And they gotta let it out somewhere. Colored men. White men. They both crazy. Honey, the point is you gotta look at it this way: A whole lotta women can't, I got a man who'll kill for me.

~ Bebe Moore Campbell

The standard of matrimony is erected by affection and purity, and does not depend upon the height, or bulk, or color, or wealth, or poverty of individuals. Water will seek its level; nature will have free course; and heart will answer to heart.

~ William Lloyd Garrison

As I’ve been telling your, son, you get nowhere looking at clothes and the color of the skin to judge a man. It won’t tell you nothing about what’s inside. That’s where a fellow’s mettle is, and that’s what counts.

~ Richard Puz

To me, its just a word, a word whose power is owned by the user and his or her intention. People give words power, so banning a word is futile, really. 'Nigga' becomes 'porch monkey' becomes 'coon' and so on if that's what's in a person's heart. They key is to change the person. And we change people through conversation, not through censorship.

~ Jay-Z

Color can be measured in the depth of ones' skin, however character is measured by the content of ones' heart.

~ Mark W. Boyer

In the race of life I would rather to be around the best and sink than to be around mediocrity and swim.

~ Xela Ffonrims

In a race, what matters is not who started first, but who finished first.

~ Ashok Kallarakkal

You have to learn the difference between a man’s looks, and how fine he shoots. They’ve never been one and the same.

~ Richard Puz

If life is becoming a race, could it be time to slow down?el

~ Evinda Lepins

The white people are crazy. They all want to be rich, same as we do, but they do not admit to themselves that you only get rich by taking things from other people. They think that if you do not see the people you are stealing from, or if you do not know them, or if they do not look like you, it is not really stealing.

~ Philipp Meyer

It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you can do with natural hair

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Libraries are about books. Books have no color. And they don't care who reads them.

~ Augusta Scattergood

We know You love us. We love You, too. I mean, six, seven thousand years from now . . . won't make no difference, will it? Everybody gonna be so mixed up by then that far in the future that they all gonna be the same color by then, ain't they?

~ Larry Brown

It makes Brooke feel strange in her stomach. It is like the feeling when she reads a book like the one about the man with the bomb, or thinks a sentence, just any old sentence like: the girl ran across the park, and unless you add the describing word then the man or the girl are definitely not black, they are white, even though no one has mentioned white, like when you take the the out of a headline and people just assume it's there anyway. Though if it were a sentence about Brooke herself you'd have to add the equivalent describing word and that's how you'd know. The black girl ran across the park.

~ Ali Smith