100 Quotes by David Olusoga

No matter that you're a British citizen, no matter that you were born here - your skin colour means you do not have the same rights as others to express critical opinions about your own country.

Because racism is not like jealousy or selfishness, it is not a primal urge or a basic instinct, it is a 400-year-old political and economic system that has infected our institutions, our culture and even our thinking.

Black people are expected to be passive citizens, good immigrants, mute and grateful.

Many historians will tell you that there are no laws of history and no great cycles that govern human events. History often appears more random than rhythmic. But if not patterns or cycles, there are certainly coincidences and some are so marked that they are hard not to notice.

Britain today is not revolutionary France. There are no grades of citizenship. An immigrant who has just shaken hands at the end of their citizenship ceremony is as British as a member of the oldest family in the land.

The emotional compact between football clubs and their supporters is visceral and usually lifelong.

Britain went to war in 1939 in the name of freedom and democracy, but fielded armies within whose ranks were black and brown men who were regarded and often treated as second-class citizens.

1819 was a year of hunger, mass unemployment, political repression and murderous, state-sanctioned violence.

I am as much British, white and working class, my mother's background, as I am black and Nigerian, my father's heritage.