163 Quotes About Race-and-racism-in-america

I don't think white people think about their whiteness enough in this country. When the news says "White people blah blah blah," every white person says, "That's not me, I'm not White People." Whereas when then news says, "Black people blah blah blah," even if I don't relate to that, I know that's me. I have to accept some responsibility for that, or I have to choose not to, but I can't act like I'm not involved in it. - W. Kamau Bell

Here was one of the white man's most characteristic behavior patterns- where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don't share his vainglorious self-opinion.

Racism is not a byproduct as much as it's the foundational stock in the American soup.

Tell me the truth of the matter. When I don't understand, I will not protest or judge or correct, I will simply listen harder. I am here to recognize you as my fellow human being with a story.

Because it is psychological. I see the boys in the park, the young boys, smoking and playing basketball when they should be in school. I couldn't understand why when I first arrived. Now, I am starting to see. It is because they have been told in school, in their community, on the street, that they are nothing, and so they have started to believe it. Once that happens, it is over. You can't be a man, a husband, a father. You can't do anything, once you start to believe that.

Becoming unremarkable, invisible, compliant--these were useful tricks for a black man in a white neighborhood. Survival techniques.

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.

...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...

If everybody in the world despises you and hates you, sees your features as ugly and simian, makes jokes about your ways of talking, calls you stupid and beneath contempt; if you have no history, no heroes, and no future where a hero might lead, then you might begin to hate yourself.... And then one hot summer's night you just erupt and go burning and shooting and nobody seems to know why.