Race Relations In America Quotes

“If you love your country, you must be willing to defend it from fraud, bigotry, and recklessness--even from a president.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above and below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in.”
― Cornel West, Race Matters

“Because whites are not socialized to see ourselves collectively, we don't see our group's history as relevant. Therefore, we expect people of color to trust us as soon as they meet us. We don't see ourselves as having to earn that trust.”
― Robin DiAngelo, What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy

“We've got to get on the same page before we can turn it. We've tried a do-it-yourself approach to writing the racial narrative about America, but the forces selling denial, ignorance, and projection have succeeded in robbing us of our own shared history--both the pain and the resilience. It's time to tell the truth, with a nationwide process that enrolls all of us in setting the facts straight so that we can move forward with a new story, together.”
― Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes....Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual or physical homicide upon the out-group.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“I was 18 wen I started driving
I was 18 the first time I was pulled over.

It was 2 AM on a Saturday
The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror,
he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon,
and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house.
Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man
who brings a gun to a food fight.

He called me son
and I thought to myself,
that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy,"
He asks for my license and registration,
wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood,
if the car is stolen,
if I have any drugs
and most days, I know how to grab my voice
by the handle and swing it like a hammer.
But instead,
I picked it up like a shard of glass.
Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully
because I know that this much melanin
and that uniform is a plotline to a film that
can easily end with a chalk outline baptism,
me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera
and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags.

Once, a friend of a friend asked me
why there aren't more black people in the X Games
and I said, "You don't get it."

Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America.
We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives
because the old ones have been working for decades.

Jim Crow may have left the nest,
but our streets are still covered with its feathers.
Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line
between a traffic stop and the cemetery,

it's the way my body tenses up
when I hear a police siren in a song,
it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me,
it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't.
I don't need to go volcano surfing.
Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer
drives right past without pulling me over

and I realize
I'm going to make it home safe.

This time.”
― Rudy Francisco, Helium

“your ears are too small for some things”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“I also found that what the white man of the South practiced for himself, he assumed to be unthinkable in white women. They could and did fall in love with the pretty mulatto and quadroon girls as well as black ones, but they professed an inability to imagine white women doing the same thing with Negro and mulatto men. Whenever they did so and were found out, the cry of rape was raised, and the lowest element of the white South was turned loose to wreak its fiendish cruelty on those too weak to help themselves.”
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells

“Racial prejudice has always been a difficult topic for me. On several occasions I've withdrawn from conversations that devolved into white bashing. I can never make a general negative statements based on whiteness. Tom didn't choose me without consideration for my race, but rather I think he chose me because of it.”
― Francis Mandewah

“We came from different backgrounds; he was white from privileged class in America, and I black from a village in Africa, but he was kind generous, and he reached out to this young poor black boy. He changed the odds against me. Our friendship rose above race.”
― FRIENDSHIP: A True Story of Adventure, Goodwill, and Endurance.

“Stop killing our children. Have it all. My civil liberties. My basic human rights. And though I will continue my struggle to refrain from shouting how much of an ingenious coward you are, you win.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“In principle, it was easy to support the civil rights movement in Mississippi or Washington or on the streets of Detroit. Of course, it was right. But feeling- now, there's a war zone full of land mines which could blow to smithereens any right-thinking individual. And that of course is the territory of race.”
― Susan Richards Shreve, Skin Deep: Black Women & White Women Write About Race

“If it’s going to be too hot to work outside, we know who’s going to be affected,” Dr. Bullard said. “If we’re talking about urban heat islands, we know who can’t afford to run their air-conditioners 24/7.”
― Dr. Robert Bullard, professor Texas Southern

“Lynchings in the past have significantly shaped race relations in the present. A killing such as George Floyd’s lands on black people with a much heavier psychological weight because of lynching’s legacy. Too many white people fail to recognize this, and that needs to change. The hurt is too great, the simmering fear and anger too volatile, to bury forever. All Americans who would seek or demand a nation that is fairer to every citizen, less racist, and more peaceful have a responsibility to know this history in detail. … Confronting this ugliness would be difficult for everyone, of course, but it should be attempted. Ignorance and denial certainly have not worked, because this American wound still bleeds.”

-- “Why White America Must Learn the History of Lynching”, Skeptical Inquirer (December 2020)”
― Guy P. Harrison

“his tears came way before any words”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“I think that the only thing keeping my grandma and ol' man Coles apart is their skin color”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“the kind of mud that pulls your shoes off”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“Everybody got a past but the kind of past my grandma and Red got ain't the kind they like to talk about”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“If food or music ain't helping none then you know something must be really wrong”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“Her music drawer looked like a rainbow”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“There's more to me than these earrings and blonde hair. I got dreams too.”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“I always been just me so I always been somebody”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“some friends are bought, some friends don't cost a dime”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“Winning is great, but being accepted is greater”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“Don't be afraid of something because we always learn from something different”
― Randolph Randy Camp, America: No Purchase Necessary A Novel

“We learn that the United States is the pinnacle of democracy in the world, but how can freedom be made perfect when it was built upon the genocide of Indigenous people, the enslavement of Black people, and the colonization of Mexicans?”
― Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

“We live in a country where there are more than 60 million Latinos, making up almost a fifth of the American population. But we aren't the ones narrating our own story; rather we became subjects at the mercy of someone else finding us worthy of taking up space in the world. Until our history, struggles, and unique experiences are unearthed, the whole country will suffer because the American story will remain incomplete. It's incredible what our people have survived in this country, and how little Americans of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds know about it. When our rich past is kept from us, it leaves people to believe that we belong somewhere else—outside this country. Without an accurate telling of our history, we cannot fully address problems that are rooted in the past. When we are viewed as foreigners, our issues become someone else's problems—not America's problems.”
― Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

“...my racial identity is a concept that escapes intellectual conversations about race. My personal experiences contradict the idea that Latino is only an ethnicity and not a race. But suggesting that Latino should be a race confounds the situation even more, because we are all so different and experience the world differently, though the same could be said of any other racial group.

When others state, 'Latino is not a race, it's an ethnicity,' they ignore that not all Latinos have the same ethnicity, either. And though we don't all share the same ethnicity, the exact language, religion, customs, culture, food, and so forth, and though we are not the only ethnic group in America, we are the only people who are singled out by our ethnicity.”
― Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

“We cannot make ourselves or allow others to make us small so we can fit in the minds and hearts of white people. America might never love us back, so we must love ourselves.”
― Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation