Malcolm X Quotes

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.

We have avoided in recent years talking openly and honestly about race out of fear that it will alienate and polarize. In my own view, it’s our refusal to deal openly and honestly with race that leads us to keep repeating these cycles of exclusion and division, and rebirthing a caste-like system that we claim we’ve left behind

Still, it's clear that there are lots of people out there who are uncomfortable [about racism]. The Civil War was a long time ago but there are aspects of it that remain unsettled.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.

There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

At the heart of the fractured soul of America is the frightening chasm of race.

It's so hard for me to even acknowledge America without talking about race. If you look at our society, if you look at the prisons, if you look at the poverty and which side of the line the majority of people are, we have to acknowledge how we divide ourselves up, that there's racism alive in this country. And it's not in the law. It's in our minds. And that's what we have to actively battle.

I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle?'

I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

All peoples are struggling to blast a way through the industrial monopoly of races and nations, but the Negro as a whole has failed to grasp its true significance and seems to delight in filling only that place created for him by the white man.

There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US - from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.

It's very easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to appeal to [Negro from ghetto]. I have never thought of this, but I think this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it because they don't even know they're outnumbered.

I'm sick and tired of black and white people of good intent giving aspirin to a society that is dying of a cancerous disease.

The separating of a section of America for Afro- Americans is similar to expecting a heaven in the sky somewhere after you die.

You must address the historical and political differences in race and ethnicity in this country before you hold tenaciously to insubstantial, and unsubtantiated, beliefs.

I need to get everything straight. I'm not involved in a power struggle between black and white.

Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention.

I think this mythology - that we're all beyond race, of course our police officers aren't racist, of course our politicians don't mean any harm to people of color - this idea that we're beyond all that (so it must be something else) makes it difficult for young people as well as the grown-ups to be able to see clearly and honestly the truth of what's going on. It makes it difficult to see that the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement manifested itself in the form of mass incarceration, in the form of defunding and devaluing schools serving kids of color and all the rest.