Opal Tometi Quotes

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

The reality is we have allowed systemic racism to continue through all these years.

We tend to think of racism as this interpersonal verbal or physical abuse, when in truth, that is only one way that racism manifests itself. The reality of contemporary racism is that it while it is ubiquitous, it is often invisible, subsequently making it more difficult to name and identify.

I'm not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting, but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered it more of a manifestation of humanity's problem rather than my personal problem.

We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.

Sadly, if President Obama is willing to ignore the pain of race-based discrimination and injustice so as to make whites comfortable - and this, after he has already been elected and the campaign is long over - then the likelihood he will ever speak the truth about these matters, let alone address them, shrinks to nearly zero.

All whites benefitted from American slavery.

If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.

Modern technical civilization does not seem to be as well handled by the black man as by the white man in the United States

Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

With George Bush's policies, I could make an argument for how they affect black people in a negative way. You know what I mean? But I wouldn't argue that he's a white supremacist.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

The default of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. I mean, that's what it does; that's what it's been doing for hundreds of years.

There's always opposition when you speak on topics like I'm speaking on. But I'm a black man in America. I grew up black in America. You can't tell me that what I've experienced and what I've seen is not true.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

We need to recognize that racism has never been subtle, though it has gone underreported.

In the U.S., while individual whites might be against racism, they still benefit from their group's control. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won't be one of them.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.

The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.'