George Saunders Quotes

We think of Shots Fired as almost an autopsy of Ferguson that shows the events from every street in the house. And, in dealing with these two murders of a black victim and a white victim, we show the ways that communities and the media deal with victims differently based on race.

That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

Until we address the pervasive structural and interpersonal threats facing communities of color, we will remain unequipped to make equity a reality.

We need to dismantle the systems that were built on racism, that were built on the backs of black people.

The real nightmare resides in a society that hides behind the mutually informing and poisonous notions of colorblindness and a post-racial society, a convenient rhetorical obfuscation that allows white Americans to ignore the institutional and individual racist ideologies, practices and policies that cripple any viable notion of justice and democracy.

The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple - talk about class and hope no one notices.

I just heard that some lead was coming into Newark into schools, and I asked the question, "Whose schools?" They said, "The Black and the Brown." Is that an accident? I don't think so. We are being designed to be destroyed - and unless we see that, and come together as a people under vicious attack we will suffer the consequences of evil that's in high places.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.

The Government is responsible for what is happening to black people in America.

There are many white people in this country who realize that the system itself - as it is constructed - is not so constructed that it can produce freedom and equality for the negro, and the system has to be changed.

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

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.

I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans.

While it has become “cool” for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white people do not feel that this pleasure should be linked to unlearning racism.

The national conversation around white entitlement, around institutionalized racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, came about in large part because of the widening and broadening of our understanding of inequality. That conversation was begun by Occupy.

When a black person has no electricity, no water, they call it the ghetto. When white people have no electricity and no water, they call it camping.

I'm a grandmother and like every grandmother, I worry about the safety and security of my grandchildren, but my worries are not the same as black grandmothers.

I think racial justice - and addressing the sick and enduring legacy of structural racism - remains one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one that's particularly important for more and more white people to speak up about.

I think drugs affect poor people and people of color more than anyone.

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

No, we are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.

What I know about this world is that white people will take care of themselves. And what I have learned is that if you are where they are on an equal basis, they cannot take care of themselves without taking care of you.