When I first saw a White Dutch person dressed up as Black Pete, I was both sickened and shocked. It's hard to stand next to someone who views your skin color and hair as a costume. As a filmmaker, whenever I get that feeling, I want to explore what motivates people to engage in such offensive behavior and enlighten folks about its origins.
Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
Races are very often invented from ignorance, or for evil purposes.
Growing up in a predominantly white area of the predominantly white state of Wisconsin, it was, I'm sad to say, relatively easy for me to go through life without recognizing or reckoning with the obvious signs of racism.
The problem is that my generation was pacified into believing that racism existed only in our history books.
a white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when it comes to race relations, not telling the whole truth about the fog one inhabits slows down the work of groping forward.
White people’s number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. We don’t have to learn about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.
The overwhelming condemnation makes it clear we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball... is in teaching people what racism actually is ... which allows people to say incredibly racist things while insisting they would never.
I'm glad Hurricane Katrina happened. It taught us an important lesson: black people can't swim.
I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.
We will, as Americans, inhale another culture on a fork before we try their music or their art or even, God forbid, hang out with the actual people.
When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness.
When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.
If you can judge a wise man by the color of his skin Then mister you’re a better man than I
When I was a kid growing up in New York, I was pretty unaware of racism. I think when we're young - before we lose our innocence - we're sort of unaware of the more flawed qualities of each other.
At least black people knew when they were slaves; you remain clueless.
I'm racist? How can that even be possible? I was a friend of Michael Jackson's back when he was black.
When I countered that Archie Bunker didn't have to put down a race of people to say that, he replied, 'and you're the dumbest white kid I've ever met.'
The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races.
Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.
It was hard for me to do the show (All-American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show and the host said, "Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?" So I looked at the camera and said, "Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate."
The truth is that our race survived ignorance; it is our scientific genius that will do us in.
It is astonishing to see how little some of our would-be great and wise white men know about the Negro, his ability, his progress, his books, newspapers, churches, home tastes, etc.
We all see color. We do. And anyone who says he doesn't see color is confused or isn't telling the truth. Except... and I know how this sounds, but I can't remember any point in my life where I saw other people and thought of their color.
When I was a kid, I honestly never thought about race. I didn't see differences.
