Racism That Thing Quotes & Sayings

Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing ... then it will be done, but not until then. — Spike Lee

Racism was an important moral issue, one that the church needed to confront. Putting a black man in a position of honor and authority was a good thing, and if there was controversy over it, that was not a bad thing thing, either. People needed to work through these things, and not just in the abstract. — Timothy B. Tyson

The streets will teach you about racism and capitalism and survival of the fittest. Don't worry about that. The only thing you've got to worry about is if you've got enough cold-blooded ambition to apply the lessons you get taught. — Snoop Dogg

The ONLY thing you should be saying to be is that you recognize that you were born into a racist, white supremacist system that imbued you with racist ideals from birth. That you recognize your racism, privilege, and inherent bias and are actively working to unlearn it. If you are not saying that then you are not saying anything, and you don't have permission to speak to me. — Seren Sensei

I - listen, racism - being a racist is the worst thing you can say about somebody. I mean, it is such a charged accusation. And I really think people should be very careful before they level that. — Megyn Kelly

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 look like you then you don't face racism. If you don't think about Ferguson every single second because your race is being killed every hour, that's not racism. If you don't get called derogatory slurs because of your skin tone that's not racism. If you don't hate your body because of your race that's not racism. If you don't have to go through life knowing people will think of you as ugly or disgusting and hate you simply because your white that's not racism. You don't face racism for being white. Ya people can be jerks about it. But its not institutionalized. That's like saying you face discrimination for being straight. It's not a thing. You don't face racism. You might want to get over that — Adam Snowflake

Anything that is as old as racism is in the blood line of the nation. It's not any superficial thing-that attitude is in the blood and we have to educate about it. — Nannie Helen Burroughs

Ah sortay jist laugh whin some cats say that racism's an English thing and we're aw Jock Tamson's bairn up here ... it's likesay pure shite man, gadges talkin through their erses. — Irvine Welsh

The hardest thing I had to overcome in life? I think racism. That's so difficult because I don't think anyone can ever understand it. It's not that people don't want to understand it, but they don't want to touch it. — Herschel Walker

I really think that discrimination and racism is a horrible thing. And I don't want any form of it in our government, in our public sphere. — Rand Paul

The white supremacists are really pretty smart. If they can't scare us with the essential inferiority line, they'll wrap it in a miasma of sex, because that's the only thing they know is feared in our fundamentalist hearts down here. — Harper Lee

The thing is that racism is systematic, so of course it sometimes manifested itself within the clubs. But I have certainly experienced racism outside of the clubs as well. — Craig Seymour

The other thing you have to understand was that the message crept into our national consciousness very slowly. It did not happen all at once. We did not wake up one morning to hear it pouring out of the radio at full strength. It started with a sneering comment, the casual use of the term "cockroach," the almost humorous suggestion that Tutsis should be airmailed back to Ethiopia. Stripping the humanity from an entire group of people takes time. It is an attitude that requires cultivation, a series of small steps, daily tending. — Paul Rusesabagina

White people now tan to get darker; and black people wear their hair like white people. We are all confused. Deep down we admire each other, but we don't accept it. The silly thing is that the color of one's skin is simply evolution's answer for dealing with different rates of exposure to the sun. How ignorant is it then to judge a person on that? — Manasa Rao

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition. — Christopher Hitchens

Everyone's a racist. It's the one thing that makes us all the same. — Christopher Titus

To Learn is to create. Learning- whether it is programming, mathematics, art, music, poetry, biology, or chemistry- is all about breaking down walls and freeing the one thing that kept us alive: knowledge.

Knowledge expands freedom in all its forms. Knowledge breaks down walls. It liberates the oppressed. We are committed to knowledge. Knowledge as a hammer against classism, against sexism, against racism, against gender discrimination, against slavery, against bigotry, against war, against hatred. If there is darkness in the world, we will light it up. — Leopoldo Gout

Racism is a phenomenal thing; it is like a thick mist that obscures the vision and judgement of even great minds. — J. Nozipo Maraire

Our experience with the Nazis had shown one thing: where racism is practiced, it damages the whole community, not just the victim group. Were we racists or were we not? That was the important thing to discover. — John Howard Griffin

We want to believe something very similar about racism and accusations of racism. If we can prove that a particular allegation of racism is unfounded or untrue, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief and try to move on. That is part of racism's power. It tricks us into thinking that we can wish it away with a string of logical premises and conclusions, with a singular decree of guilt or innocence. We fantasize about isolating this thing and determining its measurable impact once and for all, especially now that blatant forms of racism have been so thoroughly demonized in mainstream society. — John L. Jackson Jr.

The worst moment in my life was when I was seven years old and I discovered that there was a thing such as racism. You don't know you're different until someone lets you know. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

We led strange, hidden lives. We were advocating one thing: that this country rid itself of the racism that prevented some citizens from living as fully functioning men and as a result dehumanized all men. We were advocating only that this country live up to its promises to all citizens. But since racism always hides under a respectable guise - usually the guise of patriotism and religion - a great many people loathed us for knocking holes in these respectable guises. It was clear that we would have to live always under threat. — John Howard Griffin

It's the easiest thing in the world to be kind to someone, to show love, to forgive. You are born with this instinct - it should be your first reaction. NOT violence, anger and hatred! That is something we are taught, it's a Choice You Make. — Michelle Horst

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing. — Toni Morrison

I'm a real person, and I'm angry. I'm trying to use this celebrity thing to get people some help. AIDS, poverty, racism - I want to be one of the hands that helps stop all that. I'll put it on my shoulders. I'll charge it to my account. — Jamie Foxx

We treat racism in this country like it's a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You've got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it's immune to and what breaks it down. — Chris Rock

By the time I visited those battlefields, I knew that they had been retrofitted as the staging ground for a great deception, and this was my only security, because they could no longer insult me by lying to me. I knew - and the most important thing I knew was that, somewhere deep with them, they knew too. I like to think that knowing might have kept me from endangering you, that having understood and acknowledged the anger, I could control it. I like to think that it could have allowed me to speak the needed words to the woman and then walk away. I like to think this, but I can't promise it. The struggle is really all I have for you because it is the only portion of this world under your control. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If political correctness has achieved one thing, it's that it has made the Conservative party cloak their inherent racism behind more creative language — Stewart Lee

I came from a war-torn country and I was a victim of that racism because within tribes, within political lines, people were fighting. The first thing that I like to fight is racism because I know what it means, how it destroys the fabric of my society, of my wellbeing. — Pearl Tan

And the basis on which we agreed to operate with them involved a manifesto, where it states that we proceed from different ideologies and policies. One thing that we insisted on was that they should take an oath to reject racism and discrimination. — Mangosuthu Buthelezi

But if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall. — James Weldon Johnson

It's not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it's hard work, but it's the price you pay for owning everything. — Scott Woods

There was no mistake in us making abortion legal and available on demand. That was what we call progress. Just like it was no mistake that we abolished institutional racism in this country around the same time. The easy thing to do is lay low, but then are we who we say we are? Do we actually stand for anything, if what we do stand for is under attack and we say nothing? There is nothing to be ashamed of here except to allow a radical and recessive group of people to bully and intimidate our mothers and sisters and daughters for exercising their right of choice. — Mark Ruffalo

I've been in this struggle for many years now. I understand racism. I understand that there are a lot of people in this country who don't care about the problems of the inner city. We have to fight every day that we get up for every little thing that we get. And so I keep struggling. — Maxine Waters

The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise. — Marina Warner

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia. — Anna Quindlen

Okay. I'm not a white male. At least, not predominantly so. And as I mentioned before, I'm in an environment right now where race is really important. See, Chinese men are not that physically intimidating. We're not that tall. We're not that built. We have exactly one thing going for us in a fight - that our opponent recognizes that there's a possibility, no matter how remote, that we might know kung-fu. — Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color." - - Unknown
"Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim. — Albert Memmi

I never see the color of a person. I never notice the color of their eyes. But the thing that always gets my attention. Is when the spout out lies — Stanley Victor Paskavich

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

No matter what vision one has of South Africa, the first thing that must be done is to destroy racism. — Joe Slovo

The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world. — Michelle Alexander

In race relations, the single gesture and the single individual are more often than not doomed to failure. Only the group and the long-term, undeviating policy make much headway ... if you want to make the world a better place, the first thing you must accept is the fact that you cannot transcend your limitations as an individual. — Margaret Halsey

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason. — Toni Morrison