Racially Quotes & Sayings

Trent Lott has regained a position of leadership. He was the former majority leader who lost his post for racially insensitive commentary. I believe he mentioned that Strom Thurmond in 1948, who ran as a segregationist candidate, should have won ... But now, sound the irony alarm. He has recaptured a position and his position
I kid you not
in the Senate will be minority whip. So, my guess is he takes to that job like, let's say, white on rice. — Jon Stewart

I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice. — Bill Ayers

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature. — Sherman Alexie

In a racially divided society, majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy. — Lani Guinier

Thomas Jefferson, that owner of many slaves, chose to begin the Declaration of Independence by directly contradicting the moral basis of slavery, writing "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights ... " thus undercutting simultaneously any argument that Africans were racially inferior, and also that they or their ancestors could ever have been justly and legally deprived of their freedom. In doing so, however, he did not propose some radically new conception of rights and liberties. Neither have subsequent political philosophers. For the most part, we've just kept the old ones, but with the word "not" inserted here and there. Most of our most precious rights and freedoms are a series of exceptions to an overall moral and legal framework that suggests we shouldn't really have them in the first place. — David Graeber

So defendants like Walter McMillian, even in counties that were 40 or 50 percent black, frequently found themselves staring at all-white juries, especially in death penalty cases. Then, in 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that prosecutors could be challenged more directly about using peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner, giving hope to black defendants - and forcing prosecutors to find more creative ways to exclude black jurors. — Bryan Stevenson

Christianity is a creed embraced by billions, but rarely chosen by anyone. The same is true of Islam, whose followers now make up about one-fifth of the world's population of sex billion people. Jews are racially born into their religion. Today we have utterly forgotten that heresy derives from the Greek heraisthai, "to choose." To be heretical means to have choices and not be forced or obligated to believe what one is told to believe. A heretic is free to choose what to believe, or not to believe. — John Lamb Lash

Michigan is very racially separated and the city of Detroit itself is 84 percent African-American and the surrounding suburbs are 86 percent White. — Kwame Kilpatrick

White supremacy has taught white people to be racially, culturally, & politically illiterate. — Chris Crass

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time. — Charles Kuralt

People always say 'You do racial comedy.' And I don't, exactly. I do cultural comedy. Because race and culture are two different things. There's black people from America and then there's black people from Africa. Racially, they're the same; culturally, they're extremely different. — Russell Peters

If a player is racially insulted, he should have the right to leave the field. — Ruud Gullit

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s. — E. J. Dionne

At last, Mythic feeling and conscious perception no longer confront each other as antagonists but as allies. Passionate nationalism is no longer directed toward tribal, dynastic or theological loyalties, but toward that primal substance, the racially based nationhood itself. Here is the message which will one day melt away all dross, eliminate all that is base, and bring into being all that is noble. — Alfred Rosenberg

I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood. So going over to friends' houses for dinner, their parents listened to Al Green and Luther Ingram. It was something that hit me early on, the feeling that came across. — Justin Townes Earle

The socially pernicious, racially wasteful, and soul-withering consequences of the working of mothers outside the home must cease. And this can only come to pass, either through the programme of institutional upbringing, or through the intimate renaissance of the home. — Ellen Key

According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals
just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women. — Ana Castillo

The major cause for American Negroes intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and thus not remedial to a major degree by improvement in environment. — William Shockley

These rules have made it possible for law enforcement agencies to boost dramatically their rates of drug arrests and convictions, even in communities where drug crime is stable or declining.33 But that is not all. These rules have also guaranteed racially discriminatory results. The reason is this: Drug-law enforcement is unlike most other types of law enforcement. — Michelle Alexander

My one ambition is to get all Americans to realize that they are, and must continue to be, the greatest Race on the face of this old Earth, and second, to realize that whatever apparent Differences there may be among us, in wealth, knowledge, skill, ancestry or strength - though, of course, all this does not apply to people who are racially different from us - we are all brothers, bound together in the great and wonderful bond of National Unity, for which we should all be very glad. — Sinclair Lewis

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed. — Jonathan Kozol

As professor Sheri Lynn Johnson once remarked, "If prosecutors exist who . . . cannot create a 'racially neutral' reason for discriminating on the basis of race, bar exams are too easy."80 — Michelle Alexander

Socially, politically, economically, militarily, culturally, racially, sexually, demographically, even mythologically, World War II was the crucible that forged modern America. It was the transforming event that reshaped all who lived through it, and continues to affect those born after it. Only the American Revolution that created the new nation and the Civil War that preserved the Union rank with it in importance. — Haynes Johnson

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the United States is a racially divided nation where extreme racial inequalities continue to persist. — Robert D Bullard

I understand Tea Partyers' anger with the system, but they are in way over their heads and often racially motivated, and I can't be part of that. — Zach Galifianakis

Now, [Donald] Trump has thus far gotten endorsements from illustrious group, that includes Sarah Palin, David Duke, Dennis Rodman, racially profiling birther sheriff, Joe Arpaio, vaping Congressman Duncan Hunter, and just this afternoon, infamous Maine Governor Paul LePage who accused drug dealers with D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty of impregnating white women. — Chris Hayes

Not to intermarry racially is bad for the survival of the country. — Nicolas Sarkozy

Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria, the Centre of science and learning in the ancient world. Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else, whom he called barbarians and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. He thought it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples. But Erathosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism, he believed there was good and bad in every nation. — Carl Sagan

Historically, opposition to immigration in the United States has been racially and religiously motivated in the ugliest, nastiest way possible. — Grover Norquist

As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression. — Chantal Zabus

We Aryans are those of European descent who are racially conscious and who have committed our lives to our people's survival and evolutionary advancement. We shall do our duty. We shall not surrender our freedom and our very existence to Jewish or any other power. We shall preserve our heritage and our hard-won rights and freedoms. We shall guide our people up the evolutionary stairway to the stars. — David Duke

If I wanted to fight to make a better world racially, I wouldn't be in the music business. You dig, if I were going to be a freedom fighter music is the wrong field. — Chaka Khan

In the early IBM team, that was a racially diverse team, a gender-diverse team. — Megan Smith

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all. — Russell Peters

I think my roles have been wonderfully varied. Not one has been racially stereotypical, and I have purposely chosen them like that. — Naomie Harris

Many elitists hate rap as much as they hate country, though they don't like to admit it for fear of appearing racially insensitive. — Will Shetterly

Having racially diverse casts on television is a more accurate depiction of the demographic of the world we live in. — Grace Gealey

My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around. — John Piper

Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And - how many of us do know it? — Philip K. Dick

Why Europe grew so powerful. Was it something about the geography of Europe? Was it that Europeans are somehow racially superior? Was it their religion? The answer (or at least the proximate cause) may be that the Europeans rode on the crest of a powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it. — Paul Graham

Nor will arguments be of any use against a fascist who is narcissistically convinced of the supreme superiority of his Teutonism, if only because he operates with irrational feelings and not with arguments. Hence, it would be hopeless to try to prove to a fascist that black people and Italians are not racially "inferior" to the Teutons. He feels himself to be "superior," and that's the end of it. The race theory can be refuted only by exposing its irrational functions, of which there are essentially two: that of giving expression to certain unconscious and emotional currents prevalent in the nationalistically disposed man and of concealing certain psychic tendencies. — Wilhelm Reich

Everyone is so estranged; no one is rooted. That's what I like to write about more than anything else. Everything being so mixed up. Racially mixed up, people moving from place to place, everything shifting. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Cincinnati like so many other cities, we know that so many of our schools, when it comes to public schools, are still de facto segregated racially. It has to do with residential segregation. It has to do with James Crow, Jr., which is at work, de facto rather than legally so that some of the integration is taking place among more and more well-to-do. — Cornel West

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family. — Saul Alinsky

A friend to me has no race, no class and belongs to no minority. My friendships were formed out of affection, mutual respect and a feeling of having something strong in common. These are eternal values that cannot be racially classified. This is the way I look at race. — Frank Sinatra

You can only rule over a subject race, especially when you are in a small minority, if you honestly believe yourself to be racially superior, and it helps towards this if you can believe that the subject race is biologically different. — George Orwell

You're color blind, Jean Louise," he said. "You always have been, you always will be. The only differences you see between one human and another are differences in looks and intelligence and character and the like. You've never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the burning issue of the day, you're still unable to think racially. You see only people. — Harper Lee

My mother and my father taught me to look at the actual problem, not the face of it, not the veneer of it. So for me, I was never - I was impressed that it - racially, I was impressed, right, but now in America it's about economics, and it's been about economics, and honestly, everything's been about economics since I don't want to say the beginning of time, but it's been about economics for a long while. — Lupe Fiasco

Miley Cyrus made some chinky eyes
Standing behind an Asian guy
I don't know if this should fly
As if there wasn't enough to despise
I wasn't necessarily a fan of
Her, her dad, or Hannah Montana
I tend to prefer the songs of Rihanna
Racism against Asians is simply bananas!
Oh Miley!
Chinky eyes make you look wily
prejudice isn't thought of so highly
it doesn't make us all smiley
Why is there nothing that Asians can do?
To make fun of other races as easily as you
Why isn't racism against Asians taboo?
Why are we always so racially screwed!
All you have to do is pull at your face
To make your eyelids resemble our race
This kind of joke has no proper place
Miley Cyrus is a disgrace! — Margaret Cho

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully. — John Steinbeck

All those who are not racially pure are mere chaff. — Adolf Hitler

It's like God is trying to tell us something when the most beautiful people in the world are racially mixed. — Wen Spencer

I grew up in the '50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, 'Just bite your tongu;, don't cause any problems.' My father was not like that. Even in the toughest times racially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble. — Gregory Hines

I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life. — Joseph Stiglitz

Over the course of the 1970s conservatives made the endangered child into a kind of political and rhetorical abstraction, a way of thinking about the country and its citizens that could help advance a wide range of policy initiatives. They opposed the counterculture on the grounds that rock and roll caused adolescents to lose respect for family life. They promoted the War on Drugs with racially tinged morality tales about addicted inner-city mothers and, crucially, the "superpredator" "crack babies" to whom those mothers supposedly gave birth. (That particular epidemic was later shown to be a myth.)40 And when Anita Bryant led a campaign to allow Dade County to discriminate against homosexuals in hiring teachers for public schools, she named the effort "Save Our Children." The fear that tied all of these campaigns together was of the ease with which children could be victimized or else corrupted and turned against the society that was supposed to nurture them. — Richard Beck

All of Europe is tremendously integrated now; perhaps from all those years of colonization. Everybody that they've colonized has come to the mainland, so you'll have a racially diverse audience as well. You'll have many Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, from seven to ninety sitting in the audience, and the really incredible thing is that they all know the music. I don't mean they just know a song here and there. They know the music. They are a very educated audience. — Patti Austin

One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry. — Adolf Hitler

I had racially prejudiced comments directed at me on different blogs. People think that just because you're in the spotlight, you're fair game. It's hard, and I don't think you're ready at any age for it. Thankfully, I have some great fans who got me through it. — Kat Graham

Strasser hoped to replace the Programme of 1920. In November, he took the first steps in composing the Community's own draft programme. It advocated a racially integrated German nation at the heart of a central European customs union, the basis of a united states of Europe. — Ian Kershaw

I grew up in a very racially integrated place called Pottstown. It was an agricultural / industrial town which has since become a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up basically in a black neighborhood. — Daryl Hall

Extremists and populist movements are exploiting people's fear of those who are not like us. We can see the consequences in the form of terrorism and racially motivated violence. — Kjell Magne Bondevik

Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics. — Ben Shapiro

Our nation declared a war on people trapped in racially segregated ghettos - just at the moment their economies had collapsed - rather than providing community investment, quality education, and job training when work disappeared. Of course those communities are suffering from serious crime and dysfunction today. Did we expect otherwise? Did we think that, miraculously, they would thrive? — Michelle Alexander

In the drug war, the enemy is racially defined. The — Michelle Alexander

We know that we're not supposed to be racially biased, and we don't want to think of ourselves as racially biased, so we tell ourselves a different story. — Randall Kennedy

Cultural Studies and Ethnic Studies are on the rise, and many minority protests that I have witnessed say, in effect, "Do not racially profile us, we are Americans. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Mine has been a concern for the people, a concern to maintain stability, a concern to get people working together racially, ethnically, rich and poor - all segments of the city. — Walter Washington

Let's face it: pop music in its myriad permutations will always be sexually presumptuous, racially controversial and, frequently, politically charged. — Dan Hill

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. — Desmond Tutu

There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. — John Rhys-Davies

Worrying about inciting racial hatred in cartoons is legitimate, so that no group is racially targeted. It is why we don't like anti-Semitic cartoons. This is entirely distinct from a "blasphemy" motivation for censorship, which aims to silence scrutiny of a powerful idea and its founder, inspiring to billions. We must not confuse these two different concerns. This is the core of what most of us, especially Muslims, must reflect on in the wake of the tragedy in France. — Sam Harris

What a racially segregated system once taught the young black about living with his inferiority is now taught by a benevolent social welfare system. The difference was that in an earlier age a black parent could fight the competing influences. — Charles A. Murray

Evangelicalism, as perhaps the strongest Protestant religious movement in the United States, relies heavily on marketing principles for its strength and growth, often intentionally segmenting its market, targeting specific populations, and using homogeneity to its advantage to create religious meaning and belonging and dense ingroup social ties. Although this evangelical vigor can and is used to address racial division in unique ways, the movement also, by its heavy reliance on racially homogenous ingroups and the segmented market, ironically undercuts many of its own best efforts. — Christian Smith

I'm not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and investigating classic topics like monopoly power, racial profiling and health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad for markets, that people are racially biased and that illness is unequally distributed by social class. — Nicholas A. Christakis

Obama sees the world in two ways: from the black perspective and from the white perspective. He was raised as a black man, whose culture he has self-consciously adopted. But he was reared largely by his white grandparents. He lived a kind of racially bipartisan experience, and he will be able to speak a language that resonates with both communities. — Michael Eric Dyson

In the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the legal and moral footing of racially segregated public education in this country. — Bobby Scott

In 'Gran Torino,' I play a guy who's racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you're never too old to learn and embrace people that you don't understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess. — Clint Eastwood

There's always that sense of because we're so racially defined, if you're trying to cross the boundaries you don't fit into any particular space. — Michael Emerson

She looked out and saw a tall and comely woman beckoning to her. Susannah's first look at Mia in the flesh astounded her, because the chap's mother was *white.* Apparently Odetta-that-was now had a Caucasian side to her personality and how that must frost Detta Walker's racially sensitive butt! — Stephen King

We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer. — Piper Kerman

I always felt like the rug could be pulled out from under me at anytime. And coming from a racially mixed background, I always felt like I didn't really fit in anywhere. — Mariah Carey

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. — Tim Wise

I am doing my job and trying to win a game for my team. I shouldn't be getting racially abused; it's silly. — Jermain Defoe