Race And Racism In America Quotes

Never be content to sit back and watch as others' rights are trampled upon. Your rights could be next.

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.

What matter most is to complete the journey.

If you see a group of people struggling over generations and you attribute those struggles to bad character, then you do not truly believe we are all created equally.

Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.

Privilege is when you can afford to sit back and watch as others' rights are trampled upon.

Whites saying 'make America white again' is like millionaires saying 'make the wealthy rich again.

In my quest to find Green Cottenham, I also discovered an unsettling truth that when white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our "fault". But it is undeniably our inheritance.

Divided we are as people but if we stand together and fight we as a race will unite.

People often call fighting racism being 'PC' when they don't want to confront their own prejudice

We must tell the world that even though we elected a bigot, bigotry will not prevail.

Discrimination is discrimination, even when people claim it's 'tradition.

America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.

If origin defines race, then the entire human race is African.

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

Issues can only be resolved if each person accepts accountability in the problem.

Tolstoy was a Caucasian, Gandhi was an Asian, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a Negro, yet all of their hearts were inspired by the one idea of nonviolent resistance. King received it from Gandhi, Gandhi received it from Tolstoy, and Tolstoy received it from Christ.

The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.

Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.

Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.