Human beings are very skilled at pretending they are not what they are, and ignoring what is inside them. This includes ignoring their natural instincts, their primal instincts, because they have this notion that they...

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

But the real world doesn’t go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it’s not happening to you, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

You have to work a bit harder to offend me because I’m from the home of some of the best racism in the world. I’m a snob when it comes to racism.

Racism and religious bigotry are two essential pieces of baggage mankind carries as it moves from one century to the next.

A centre of racism is a point of pain, a point of no justice and a house of oppression.

Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.

Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.

It’s very difficult not to come across as a white supremacist when there are so many black inferiorists around.

The Indians’ insistence on clinging to their customs had to be the work of Satan there was no other explanation which is why the friars went out to hunt down and lasso the deserters and...

Oddly, I had never thought of myself as a feminist. I had been denounced by certain radical feminist collectives as a ‘lackey’ for men. That charge was based on my having written and sung two...

One would never defeat one’s circumstances by working and saving one’s pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one...

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle...

There’s such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is...

At the level of high culture with which this book is concerned, active bigotry is probably fairly rare. It is also hardly ever necessary, since the social context is so far from neutral. To act...

Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the – he said in the first 100 days he’s going to...

But the worst I think is the racism,

Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald’s body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name.

It’s not that racism doesn’t exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It’s just that I rarely worry about those things because there’s...

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

Black seamen – or “Black Jacks” as African sailors were known – enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and...

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.

There is no racism against white people. If you can turn on the tv and see people like you that’s not racism. If you can have your favorite characters who are poc race changed to...

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. “Oy!” yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. “There’s a fackin’ queue!”Never apologize, advises Lloyd George....

Our true nationality is mankind.

Les noirs ont peu de héros, souvent des zéros

The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.

Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.”Who?’ Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew.’The...

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

In the white newspapers, they use it against us. They make the Panthers look like we all just want to rip the throats out of some white folks for no good reason. We have good...

The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially...

A ‘black’ man who draws a ‘black’ person with big lips is called observant. A ‘white’ man who does the same is called a racist.

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...

If God wanted humans to play chess, he would have made us black or white.

The world seems to be witnessing a deluge of ‘haterisms’, and racist propaganda because evil’s pain was born to die, and it’s time of tyranny is near the end. Don’t get caught up by the...

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.

Whiteness–the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white–is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant...

Hate obscures all distinctions.

Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite...

The races are like America’s children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad’s favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught...

Is racial violence is the answer for happened racial violence? Which planet am I? Where are the people who taught me there is no difference? Why?

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which...

Autumn teaches us a valuable lesson. During summer, all the green trees are beautiful. But there is no time of the year when the trees are more beautiful than when they are different colors. Diversity...

I have been cheated out of being treated like a human being. In my reflection I saw an empty vessel. They had cheated me and I was desperate to make the sharp pain in my...

I used to think if I could be free I should be the happiest woman,” a young Mississippi woman recalled. “But when my master come to me, and says ‘Lizzie, you is free!’ it seems...

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man’s traditional mistrust of the man who is not...

It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs...

Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system...

And all Negroes at some period of their lives there is that yearning for a sense of group unity that is the yearning of men for a flag: for a unity that cannot be compromised,...