Quotes about Race

During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.

Whether we were in the mines of South Africa, or the liberal New York theater, nothing changed. Whites wanted everything. They thought they deserved everything. That they wanted to possess all the materials of the earth was in itself disturbing, but that they also wanted to control the souls and the pride of people was inexplicable.

Did he insult you? I mean us, the race? Not directly. Like most white racists, he was paternalistic. I would have preferred he slap me than that he talk down upon me. Then I could retaliate in kind.

For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.

In that second I was wounded. My mind struck a truth as an elbow can strike a table edge. A poor, uneducated servant in Africa was so secure he could ignore established White rudeness. No Black American I had ever known knew that security. Our tenure in the United States, though long and very hard-earned, was always so shaky, we had developed patience as a defense, but never as aggression.

I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the white-folks, so it had nothing to do with them.

You say … "We will ride on fast horses"— but those who pursue you will be faster. Isaiah 30:16

I want to finish my race in the Promised Land, not in the wilderness. You too? Then we have to cash in our fear and complacency and spend all we have on the only ticket out: BELIEF. Faith is the only thing that will ever close the gap between our theology and our reality.

Let them give thanks to the Lord for His faithful love and His wonderful works for the human race. Psalm 107:8

Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us. Hebrews 12:1

When my father articulated his vision for the future, he expressed his wish that one day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This dream was not just about me and my siblings, but about our children and their children.

The New Testament writings all presuppose that the fallen human race and the equally fallen created order are sick unto death beyond human resourcefulness.