Sandra Cisneros Quotes

White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet.

For black people who are really dark - and a lot of black people were averse to be dark skinned - it was believed that you'd be so dark that you couldn't see them at night unless they were smiling or you could see the whites of their eyes. At one time, it was a sharp comic barb that got levelled at some people.

I'm half-white and half-black. No-one will ever say I'm white, but all the road men think because I'm mixed race that I can't be bad because I'm light skin. It's crazy.

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

Black people playing tennis, next white people will be tap dancing!

Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive way that we have internalized ourselves inside black communities. You look at many of the prominent black people in this society who have been able to do well. Many have been lighter-skinned.

Even if you apply any kind of lotion and straighten your hair you will never be white.

Among Negroes we have Negroes who are as white as some white people. Still there's a difference.

Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

The world has white people and black people in it. Even in Harlem.

Why should anyone think a white skin superior in evaluating the qualities of human life? I did not really admire a white skin so much myself. Did I not prefer the brown skin that came with exposure to the sun?

When white people eat potato chips, they're called white people. When black people eat potato chips, they're called niggas.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

Race has no genetic or scientific basis.

Being of color in America by no means amounts to a constant barrage of negativity. However, unlike being white, being of color means one's race is a constant issue.

I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

There were only ever two black kids at my school. I never considered myself to be 'a black kid'. I was who I was. Which isn't to say things haven't happened to me that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't black.

And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

I never though much about race.

I realized there was racism because people thought, 'Oh, if you like roll 'n' roll, that makes you like a white kid.'

You can't get much whiter than me.

I don't think because I hang out with enough black people, I'm gonna turn black. What kind of rationalization is that? I'm just friends with people that I like. I don't care what skin color you are.

I'm Armenian, but I'm very fair and I look white... I would always get such hate about it.