Racial Inequity Quotes

Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

Time begins the healing process of wounds cut deeply by oppression. We soothe ourselves with the salve of attempted indifference, accepting the false pattern set up by the horrible restriction of Jim Crow laws.

The same would be true for something like Social Security, where historically, if you just read the law and the fact that it excluded domestic workers or agricultural workers, you might not see race in it, unless you knew that that covered a huge chunk of African Americans, particularly in the South.

White Americans believe we've made more progress since the end of slavery in 1865 than do black Americans for whom '12 Years a Slave' documents a collective memory, passed down in the genes and by the lore of generations.

Tonight the Negro knows from his radio and television that a Congo native can be a locomotive engineer, but in Jackson [Mississippi] he cannot even drive a garbage truck.

In the NBA, as in nowhere else in America, white people are utterly beholden to black people, and they're not about to let us off that easily. It's a kind of very mild payback for the last 500 years.

The reason why you were allowed to get away with that in the '60s and '70s is because this country's racist administrative policies were such that rich white kids were getting exemptions. I said no exemptions.

If we got there and we looked up and we said, "You know what? Black folks are still doing a little bit worse off than whites, but it's not like it was 20 years ago," then we can have a discussion about how do we get that last little bit. But that's a high-class problem to have.

If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.

I have never been what you would call just an integrationist. I know I've been called that... Integrating that bus wouldn't mean more equality. Even when there was segregation, there was plenty of integration in the South, but it was for the benefit and convenience of the white person, not us.

In an era when America is still too divided by race and by riches, Judge [Samuel] Alito has not written one single opinion on the merits in favor of a person of color alleging race discrimination on the job: in 15 years on the bench, not one.

It is really my opinion that the whole race would be harmless and peaceable if they were not put upon by the whites.

I've worked at a Game Stop and had my service turned down before because of the color of my skin. And it's a shame.

We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.

I had an affinity for criminal law because I came from that background. I understood it. A lot of lawyers of color understand the inequities of the system and become defense attorneys.

In the progress of nations, Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands.

The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.

The black community is broken up in general.

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

When the world's moving towards being the most inclusive it's ever been, it's unthinkable that certain basic aspects of life are still so unfair for the black community.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

There's no lobby for more spending on Black people in the cities.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.