Quotes about Racism

I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'

I mean it used to be, there was a time … when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage.

No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Bitterness has not the capacity to make the distinction between some and all . When some members of the dominant group, particularly those in power, are racist in attitude and practice, bitterness accuses the whole group.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism

The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically.

I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.

I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.

In short, the Negroes' problem cannot be solved unless the whole of American society takes a new turn toward greater economic justice.

The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishing of a segregated society. They segregated Southern money from the poor whites; they segregated Southern churches from Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything.