Mike Colter Quotes

The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works.

You sit up there, and you see the whole gamut of human nature. Even if the case being argued involves only a little fellow and $50, it involves justice. That's what is important.

Conflicts that in Sweden and Japan would be solved by quiet consultations … through the bureaucracy are fought out through formal litigation in the American court system.

We're lawyers. We present the arguments, and the court sorts out the merits.

As a freshman at Stanford University - a young black man - when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, it was a joyful moment. I was happy, absolutely. It wasn't necessarily a matter of whether he was guilty or innocent, per se, it was a matter of finally seeing someone who looked like me have the justice system work in their favor.

What happens to Black Folks today, happens to White Folks tomorrow.

The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.

Racism is a global problem and it is as damaging to Whites as it is to non-Whites. Everyone must fight against it.

The Law cuts into the core of the evil, it reveals the seat of the malady, and informs us that the leprosy lies deep within.

to move the wheels of justice is a ponderous business.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

Well, I really think that shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.

Now I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded--maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit--at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call "due process.

We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world, void of national bias, race, hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has far influenced the development of civilization.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

Being a liberal progressive has been demonized as anti-white or overly on the side of blacks. There's nothing that can be done about that; it's just where we are in the history of our perceptions.

The more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.

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.

He who has the judge for his father goes into court with an easy mind.

If all we are for is black people and white people who like black people, then I have nothing to say to Trump who is only for white people and black people who like him.

It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist.

Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

The profession of the law of which he [a judge] is a part is charged with the articulation and final incidence of the successive efforts towards justice; it must feel the circulation of the communal blood or it will wither and drop off, a useless member.