Pearl S. Buck Quotes

Because of unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, [freed slaves] never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience

If I may seem a bit moved about this, it is because of the hell I have been through because I am a Negro, and I think this committee ought to show a little more consideration for the democracy that Negroes are denied .... the menace that ought to be paid attention to is the menace where 14 or 15 million Negroes have no place to turn to feel that they are protected.

It’s time we faced facts. Southern people just don’t like Black people.

We can sugar-coat this any way we want to, but the reality is that there are some people who just don’t want a Black President.

I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.

As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

Stated briefly, the problem confronting the colored peoples of the world is how to live in freedom, peace and security without being invaded, subjugated, expropriated, persecuted and humiliated by Caucasians justifying their actions by the myth of racial superiority..

I doubted that the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored, typical coon who blacks my shoes every morning was fit for citizenship.

The worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers is ... the treatment of the Negro.

I would not use the influence of my office to deter citizens from punishing that nigger brute. I would have gladly resigned as governor and gone to Honea Path and led the mob myself.

Thought the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resisted at every step of his progress.

The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deep seated…

One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.

Color had been made the mark of enslavement and was taken to be also the mark of inferiority; for prejudice does not reason, or it would not be prejudice

When we finally got school buses for African American students in Georgia, the state legislature ordained that the front bumpers be painted black. Not even the school busses could be equal.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.

Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro.

What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists?

What whites cannot experience and may never understand is that no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in the racially divisive America.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.