Nadine Gordimer Quotes

Whites they pretended to ignore, as they busily lived mirror-image white lives.

When you're a person of color in white America, you know white people. You know why you know white people? Because you can't enjoy any kind of entertainment if you are not able to humanize white people. If you watch a film and are like, "Oh, this has white people in it? Then I'm not interested," then you can't enjoy anything in America!

If white privilege is a thing, why are people working so hard to be black? All of the award shows and cultural events favor black culture.

You got black people in an all-white country and they don't know nothing about themselves.

I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day.

I don't have a problem with being black in a white country or being with my people.

Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn’t Asian either

Well, as a native, as a colonized people you do live in the in between. The thing is I'm native. But necessarily because I'm a member of the country, I'm also a White American.

The beauty of being black in American society is that black has always been an inclusive definition. White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.

I've always liked cops, as much as you can like a group of people, you know? Sure, I've been hassled, but I'm a white dude - privileged.

As for the not-black black president issue - white people can imagine blacks worse off than them, no problem. And now they can imagine blacks better off, no problem. But they still can't imagine black people who are just like them. That's the real problem. That's racism. Not being able to believe that those others are actually just like you.

I grew up in that minority. I grew up in the South, in Roswell, Georgia, and it was heavily white, Baptist, conservative. And the idea that somebody would come there and say those things that I said created an atmosphere where some people would walk out, and suddenly they weren't in the minority. For an hour and a half, they were the majority. So I would argue that it does need to be said.

I re-read The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. It's a book every one should read, particularly Americans, as the USA is her primary focus. Her book demonstrates that white is not universal, that white is not neutral, that it has a history, which she eloquently delineates. It's not often you finish a book understanding how the world operates better than before you read it.

When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people.

Let me just say, at once: I am not now nor have I ever been a white man. And, leaving aside the joys of unearned privilege, this leaves me feeling pretty good.

[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.

We white people think that we know everything.

I don't sign for white people.

I'm most biased about how white people have to learn to shut up when the conversation of racism comes up. White people have to learn to listen. Whether they agree with what they're hearing or not, they have to know to shut up and listen.

Murder and lying comes easy for white people.

The present system under the control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white... the Negros will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way out of their present difficulties.

The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.

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

My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.