America Less White Quotes & Sayings

We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference ... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or ... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong ... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie ... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice ... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth ... you willingly bear false witness. — Mark Waid

Page one of any economic plan to get America working is to give a pink slip to the current resident in the White House. — Rick Perry

Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you will have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive towards colorlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. — Ralph Ellison

Unlike
in North America, however, there was no single
giant ice sheet that covered the entire northern half of the continent. The biggest ice sheet
covered all of Scandinavia and extended east as
far as the eastern shore of the White Sea today.
The Urals and parts of the Putorana Plateau in
northern Siberia were also heavily glaciated. In
between, however, and all the way to the Pacific
Coast, only small areas of the highest terrain had
much ice cover. The remainder was ice-free, but
with hundreds of meters of permafrost extending deep into the soil. This may seem counterintuitive, but it can be understood if we remember
that moisture available at cold temperatures is
what makes ice and snow, not the cold temperatures themselves. — Mikhail S. Blinnikov

Touring a segregated America - forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most 'cos you don't realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person. — B.B. King

This world that we live in would be perfect if there were less prejudice and people who think they are better than others. — Werley Nortreus

You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don't write that she can't really control her property, that she can't - doesn't have any say over her children, that she can't vote - if you don't put that in it, then it's a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That's true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don't realize that, it seems. — Walter Mosley

Politics in America is the binding secular religion. — Theodore White

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived. — June Jordan

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. — Wesley Morris

Our fight against racism should not be a matter of black and white, but good and evil. — Kathy McClary

If I hadn't trained Lula Ann properly she wouldn't have known to always cross the street and avoid white boys. — Toni Morrison

I hate America. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that's hard enough, I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something. — Tony Kushner

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction. — Howard Zinn

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. — Susan Sontag

Marvel Comics announced that the next Captain America will be black. He has the same powers as white Captain America, except he has to show I.D. when he votes. — Bill Maher

What religious Americans might have been slow to realize is that the ACLU's long march through the institutions of America has culminated at the door of Obama's White House. Behind that door stands the one we have "been waiting for," as liberals chanted about Obama in 2008. Obama is the fulfillment of the ACLU's messianic secularist hopes. No president has done more to empty the public square of Christians than Barack Obama. To the delight of secularists, Obama has been stacking the federal courts with ACLU-style judges who read the First Amendment through an ahistorical and atheistic prism, or as they like to call it, the "living Constitution," which is nothing more than a euphemism for whatever they think the Constitution should mean in our supposedly enlightened times. — Phyllis Schlafly

The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. The danger is another black. — Rudy Giuliani

More often than not, we think of ourselves as black, white, Asian, or Hispanic pretty much in this country, but the real America is much more than that. — Don Lemon

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. — David Brion Davis

The whites have always had the say in America. White people made Jesus white, angels white, the Last Supper white. If I threaten you, I'm blackmailing you. A black cat is bad luck. If you're put out of a club, you're blackballed. Angel's-food cake is white; devil's-food cake is black. Good guys in cowboy movies wear white hats. The bad guys always wore black hats. — Muhammad Ali

Mr. president, I've been a citizen of the United States of America for thirty three years and was never invited to the White House. It sure gives me pleasure to be invited to the Black House. — Muhammad Ali

Barack Obama will appeal to both black and white voters in America. White voters who'll think he's Tiger Woods. — Frankie Boyle

One thing my mother always instilled in me is to always know my worth. Don't settle for less. She used to say to me 'Iman, no is a complete sentence, learn to say no. You don't have to explain it you don't have to say anything after it. It's a complete sentence.' So when I came to America 1975, I found out that the black models were being paid less than white models. So the first thing I did was say I'm not going to do the job unless I'm paid the same amount. — Iman Abdulmajid

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security. — Christopher Lasch

Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. — Anonymous

Nashville has always felt perfect. I don't think Third Man Records could exist in any other town that I know of in America. Anything smaller or larger than the size of Nashville, and also the music - the attention that's paid to music in that town is sort of the right kind. It's not too hipster and it's not too fake; it's something in the middle, which is really good ground for a place like Third Man Records, that aims to be genre-less. It's great to be able to have that kind of access. — Jack White

But somewhere in America, between the freeways and the Food-4-Less, between the filling stations and the 5-o-'clock news, behind the blue blinking light coming off the TV, there is a space, an empty space, between us, around us, inside us, that inevitable, desperate, begs to be filled up. And nothing, not shame, not God, not a new microwave, not a wide-screen TV or that new diet with grapefruits, can ever, ever fill it.
Underneath all that white noise there's a lack. — Andrea Portes

By making defense lawyers more central to criminal litigation than they already were and by dramatically enlarging the range of legal claims they could raise on their clients' behalf, Warren's Court increased the gap between rich and poor defendants-and, given the racial distribution of poverty in midcentury America, between black and white defendants as well. Because the time and quality of defense counsel mattered more than before, those defendants who could buy better quality attorneys and pay them to work more hours were more advantaged than before. Relatively speaking, their poorer counterparts grew more disadvantaged. The justice system grew less egalitarian through the Supreme Court's efforts to make it more so.
The — William J. Stuntz

The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer gave least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image - the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is white America. — Malcolm X

In the realm of culture in America, white European culture has held the floor for centuries; just as with any one-sided conversation, a balance can only be achieved if the speaker who has dominated speaks less and listens more. — David Mura

Deeply disturbing in a way that only the most honest stories are, YACCUB is a fiercely written, daring journey through America's urban wilderness and into the souls of our forgotten brothers. But Wrath James White hasn't forgotten about them
and after reading this book, neither will you. — Brandon Massey

I guess the last remaining question is: What about the sombrero? It's still there, lying in the street but its temperature had returned to -24 degrees and fortunately for America it stayed there. Millions of tourists have walked all around it but not one of them has seen it, though it is in plain sight. How can you miss a very cold white sombrero lying in the Main Street of a town? In other words: There is more to life than meets the eye. — Richard Brautigan

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

Because my parents were American missionaries who sent me to public schools in rural Japan, I had to confront Hiroshima as a child. I was in the fourth grade - the only American in my class - when our teacher wrote the words "America" and "Atomic Bomb" in white chalk on the blackboard. All forty Japanese children turned around to stare at me. My country had done something unforgivable and I had to take responsibility for it, all by myself. I desperately wanted to dig a hole under my desk, to escape my classmates' mute disbelief and never have to face them again. — Linda Hoaglund

It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise human power. This, as I think Martin Luther King understood, is the real point, the real gift to America, of the struggle of the black people. In accepting the humanity of the black race, the white people will not be giving accommodation to an alien people; it will be receiving into itself half of its own experience, vital and indispensable to it, which it has so far denied at great cost. — Wendell Berry

When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem. — James Comey

The agreements of human society embrace not only protection against murder, but thousands of other things, and it is certainly true that in America - not to mention other continents - the whites have excluded the blacks from some of the benefits of those agreements. It is said that the exclusion has sometimes even extended to murder - that in parts of this country a white man may kill a black one, if not with impunity, at least with a good chance of escaping the penalty which the agreement imposes. That's bad. It's deplorable, and I don't blame black men for resenting it. But you are confronted with a fact, not a theory, and how do you propose to change it? — Rex Stout

Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America. — Anna Deavere Smith

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. — Aberjhani

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe. — Malcolm X

I'm a former federal prosecutor, I've fought terrorists and won and when we get back in the White House we will fight terrorists and win again and America will be safe. — Chris Christie

Jonathan Green had a firm handshake, clear eyes, and a jawline not dissimilar to Dudley Do-Right's. He was in his early sixties, with graying hair, a beach-club tan, and a voice that was rich and comforting. A minister's voice. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a sincerity in his eyes that put you at ease. Jonathan Green was reputed to be one of the top five criminal defense attorneys in America, with a success rate in high-profile criminal defense cases of one hundred percent. Like Elliot Truly, Jonathan Green was wearing an impeccably tailored blue Armani suit. So were the lesser attorneys. Maybe they got a bulk discount. I was wearing impeccably tailored black Gap jeans, a linen aloha shirt, and white Reebok sneakers. Green said, Did Elliot explain why we wanted to see you? — Robert Crais

We are captured, brother, surrounded by the majoritarian bandits of America. And this has happened here, in our only home, and the terrible truth is that we cannot will ourselves to an escape on our own. Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

When I was a kid, my goodness, corporate America was a bunch of stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be serious, and now it's stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be funny. — Emo Philips

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire. — Edmund White

The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party. It's been hijacked by this group that is not just Islamophobic but, really, xenophobic. They believe in sort of white, middle America, gun-toting - it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people. — Ron Schiller

I haven't been on a first date over five years.
Five. Years.
Which means, I haven't been on one since 2006.
Let me take you back to that time: 2006.
Tom Cruise and Kathie Holmes celebrated the birth of their little "TomKitten."
The Wii came out - and YouTube was flooded with videos of people throwing those little white remotes into their TVs.
Britney and Kevin call it quits, shocking America to its very core.
Facebook was still just a college campus thing - if you wanted to stalk someone, you had to buy a zoom lens and some night vision goggles.
It was a simpler time. — Elodia Strain

I located America thirty-one years ago in a Model T Ford and planted my flag. I've tried a couple of times since to find it again, riding in faster cars and on better roads, but America is the sort of place that is discovered only once by any one man. — E.B. White

The French have such an attractive civilization, dedicated to calm pleasures and general tolerance, and their taste in every domain is so sharp, so sure, that the foreigner (especially someone from chaotic, confused America) is quickly seduced into believing that if he can only become a Parisian he will at last master the art of living. — Edmund White

Black America "isn't just as fissured as white America; it is more so," wrote Gates. And the mounting intraracial disparities mean that the realities of race no longer affect all blacks in the same way. There have been perverse consequences: in part to assuage our sense of survivor's guilt, we often cloak these differences in a romantic black nationalism - something that has become the veritable socialism of the black bourgeoisie.32 — Jason L. Riley

The people of Ohio are the people of America. The people of America are reflected in Ohio.Our message has to be big, and bold, and positive, and connect, not just with people's heads but also connect with their hearts. If we do it, we will beat Hillary Clinton, and we will run the White House, and we will strengthen and fix America. — John Kasich

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 — Dee Brown

This is a sleaze bag murdering dog and he [O.J. Simpson] has played us for fools. And the worst thing he did was exacerbate the racial divide in this country. He divided black and white America. — Geraldo Rivera

He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Sejal had not thought of her home, or of India as a whole, as cool. She was dimly aware, however, of a white Westerner habit of wearing other cultures like T-shirts - the sticker bindis on club kids, sindoor in the hair of an unmarried pop star, Hindi characters inked carelessly on tight tank tops and pale flesh. She knew Americans liked to flash a little Indian or Japanese or African. They were always looking for a little pepper to put in their dish. — Adam Rex

The stark racial differences in crime rates undoubtedly impact black-white relations in America. So long as they persist, young black men will make people nervous. Discussions about the problem can be useful if they are honest, which is rare. Liberals don't help matters by making excuses for counterproductive behavior. Nor does the media by shying away from reporting the truth. — Jason L. Riley