Quotations about Racism

Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. ~Dennis Leary


One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. ~Franklin Thomas


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. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.


If a white man falls off a chair drunk, it's just a drunk. If a Negro does, it's the whole damn Negro race. ~Bill Cosby


I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger. ~Muhammad Ali, 1967, refusing to fight in Vietnam


I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats. ~Woody Allen, on the Ku Klux Klan


The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. ~Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness


Jim Bakker spells his name with 2 k's because 3 would be too obvious. ~Bill Maher


I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
~Langston Hughes, The Black Man Speaks


To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. ~William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches and Public Letters


The African race is a rubber ball. The harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise. ~African Proverb


A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family. ~Saul Alinsky


When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression. ~Jesse Jackson


Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color. ~Author Unknown


Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination. ~Author Unknown


I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government. ~Cissy Farenthold


Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity. ~Desmond Tutu


The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird


Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel