And here’s to the blues, the real blues— where there’s a hint of hope in every cry of desperation.

Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same...

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)

…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...

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

It is a big deal to work with people who are different from you. And if you’re white or of a higher class,no matter what race you are, you’ll probably mess up. Maybe get yelled...

There’s something lyrical about an eternal truth. It’s a graceful riff. A free-flowing melody. Light and airy, it floats all around you. And when it lands on your ears, when you hear it for the...

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...

sick of it whatever it’s called sick of the namesI dedicate every pore to what’s here

Anyone intent on moral clarity might want to find another book and, in fact, might not want to go anywhere near the enduring chasm of race in the United States.

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.

Now you’re just bein’ silly,” Linnie said and let out a laugh.

But in the earlier hours, or so I have read, they still have got their daylight minds. It takes the midnight mind to do the black deed to the black man.

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers...

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them;...

This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this...

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.

We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.

I’ve always looked at America like a foster mother doing it only for the check. At any minute, I just knew she’d be ready to give up on me.

It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of...

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.

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard...

No one is an outside observer of nature,We’re defined by our environment and our interaction with that environment — by our ecology. And that ecology is necessarily relative, historical and empirical.

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.

White supremacy is a black person telling the people of Baltimore to chill out and try peace, thinking they came up with that thought all on their own.

Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole...

I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.

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...

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

Not even God who made us all can kill everybody at once. He kills people one by one, and the more he kills the more people are gonna be born and grow up and go...

My heart isn’t big enough to care for the oppressors.

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...

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.

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.

He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence;...

white is not always light and black is not always dark.

Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.

I mean, we’re talking about chocolate, for chrissake! Chocolate’s wonderful! Everyone loves it! Look at me, I’m part German! That makes me a kraut! Do you know what kraut is? It’s sauerkraut, men! Which means...

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...

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.

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.

She didn’t tell him white folks couldn’t love the same as coloreds. She couldn’t love the same neither though, cuz more than half of her was white.

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

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

There is nothing like race, is there?

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...

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

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...

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain...

The tension between people is palpable, and the ideal of what it means to be and look American becomes a preoccupation to folks around the country, including me.