c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
To all you sensitive sallys out there who spend your time scribing angry letters, I have great news: Scientific models show that in the not-too-distant future, all the races will become so completely interbred that humanity will have a monolithic caramelish color and common facial features. There won't be blonds or hairy Jews anymore.Words like "Chink" will cease to have meaning. They will be relics, along with those who use them for comedy. Which is exactly why I am past that meta-racist shit and onto poop and pee. Onward and downward!
— Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Looking out the window, Moist saw a small swarm of goblins leave the train and at first he thought, ha! Trust the buggers to run away, and then he mentally corrected himself: that was storybook thinking and with clearer eyesight and a bit of understanding he realized that the goblins were scrambling up to the delvers on the rocks and beating the shit out of them by diving into the multiple layers of dwarf clothing. The delvers discovered all too rapidly that trying to fight while a busy goblin was in your underwear was very bad for the concentration.
— Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam
There's a strange uniformity in the vocabulary European soccer fans use to hate black people. The same primate insults get hurled. Although they've gotten better over time, the English and Italians developed the tradition of making ape noises when black players touched the ball. The Poles toss bananas on the field. This consistency owes nothing to television, which rarely shows these finer points of fan behavior. Nor are these insults considered polite to discuss in public. This trope has simply become a continent-wide folk tradition, transmitted via the stadium, from fan to fan, from father to son.
— Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World
There is no small irony here: An administration which flaunted its intellectual superiority and its superior academic credentials made the most critical of decisions with virtually no input from anyone who had any expertise on the recent history of that part of the world, and it in no way factored in the entire experience of the French Indochina War. Part of the reason for this were the upheavals of the McCarthy period, but in part it was also the arrogance of men of the Atlantic; it was as if these men did not need to know about such a distant and somewhat less worthy part of the world. Lesser parts of the world attracted lesser men; years later I came upon a story which illustrated this theory perfectly. Jack Langguth, a writer and college classmate of mine, mentioned to a member of that Administration that he was thinking of going on to study Latin American history. The man had turned to him, his contempt barely concealed, and said, “Second-rate parts of the world for second-rate minds.
— David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
I am pleased God made my skin black. I only wish He had to made it thicker.
— Curt Flood
What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more truly human; what matters is to discover the riches of human hearts and souls; what matters is the human content of poetry and science, the universal charm and beauty of architecture; what matters is the magnanimity of a nation's leaders and historical figures. only by exalting what is truly human, only by fusing the national with what is universally human, can try dignity - and true freedom - be achieved.It is the struggle for freedom of thought and expression, the struggle for a peasant's freedom to sow what he wants to sow, for everyone's freedom to enjoy the fruits of their own work - this is the true struggle for national dignity.The only real triumph of national freedom is one that brings about the triumph of all human freedom.For small nations and large nations alike, this is the only way forward.And it goes without saying that the Russians too - as well as Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and Uzbeks - must understand that it is precisely through renouncing the idea of their own national superiority that they can truly affirm the grandeur and dignity of their own people, of their own literature and science.
— Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook
He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He looked as if he had spent all his life dodging blows that were probably aimed at him for good reason.
— Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water
One night, I was out driving with a few friends of mine when the police pulled us over. We were told we fit the description of someone who had committed a robbery or stolen a car, though I don't really know what kind of description that could have been: three black kids in a Hyundai blasting U2's Joshua Tree on their way back from Bible study?
— Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove
This solidarity business I used to talk about ain't just--what do you youngsters call it?--theoretical. It means putting your body, your physical self, on the line, baby girl. Even when--especially when--it ain't convenient.
— Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour: A Novel
Even the Us's are Them's.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Maybe it’s time to just scrap the word “racist.” Find something new. Like Racial Disorder Syndrome. And we could have different categories for sufferers of this syndrome: mild, medium, and acute.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
— Tim Wise
We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.
— Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait
The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.
— Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait
The rhetoric of ‘law and order’ was first mobilized in the late 1950s as Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights activists used direct-action tactics in an effort to force reluctant Southern States to desegregate public facilities. Southern governors and law enforcement officials often characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order. Support of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely ‘rewarding lawbreakers.’	For more than a decade – from the mid 1950s until the late 1960s – conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find value for what is bad--since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out for the universal. When the Negro dives--in other words, goes under--something remarkable occurs.
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
— Tim Wise
Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
— Abel Meeropol
Judge: But why would that make it possible for you to fool Monsieur Gallimard? Please--get to the point.Song: One, because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in fact, a woman. And second, I am an Oriental. And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.
— David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly
In both cases, it is the prejudice, not the condition, that does the harm. It may be, as some would have it, that blacks are inherently inferior to whites or that homosexuals are all, by definition, sick. So what? Even if either condition truly is inherently undesirable, no manner of social pressure will turn blacks into whites or gays into straights. Social pressure will only exaggerate the handicap. It is still the prejudice, more than the condition, that does the harm.
— Andrew Tobias, The Best Little Boy in the World
Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
I believe it’s incredibly important to write against [racial] stereotypes. If we give in and make sure that all black women characters are asexual, gentle, and kind we wind up with another set of stereotypes.
— Justine Larbalestier
«Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,» said Topsy. «If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.»
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
His (Lincoln's) patriotism was saved from idolatry by the overwhelming sense of the sovereignty of God.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
Here we raise his children for him, cook for him, bring up his crops, butcher his hogs - even fight his wars for him - and he still won't acknowledge our existence.
— James Sallis, Moth
They'd run all these tests on him and decided he wasn't racist. He wasn't, either, but not because he thought about it particularly. He just couldn't see the point. It just made for a lot of hassle, being that way, so why be that way? Nobody was going to go back and live where they lived before, were they, and if they did (he vaguely suspected) there wouldn't be any Mongolian barbecue and maybe we'd all be listening to Pentecostal Metal and anyway the President was black.
— William Gibson, Virtual Light
Their disappearance from the human family would be no great loss to the world.
— Henry Clay
Dominicans are in fact, Haitians by default.Since the natives named the whole island named Haïti, stop being a dolt.
— Ricardo Derose
Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him--it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life--that was quite another matter. As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river.
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
They walked off down the hall in the direction of a sign that said Colored Waiting Room. Billie guessed white folks didn't have to wait.
— Elaine Hussey, The Sweetest Hallelujah
Whenever a word ''nigga'' is spoken, It's always followed by the same question, Can white people say nigger ?and the correct answer is Not really.
— Auliq a
A racist notion found in neoshamanic circles is placing high value on indigenous wisdom but not on indigenous people.
— S. Kelley Harrell, Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism
Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive
— Martin Luther King Jr.
...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality.The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
— Tim Wise
When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and "whites only" signs. These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, goodhearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners--and wished them well--nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation... Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Racists will always call you a racist when you identify their racism. To love yourself now - is a form of racism. We are the only people who are criticized for loving ourselves. and white people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.
— John Henrik Clarke
It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, or the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.
— Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
Parents and schoolteachers counsel black children that, if they ever hope to escape this system and avoid prison time, they must be on their best behavior, raise their arms and spread their legs for the police without complaint, stay in failing schools, pull up their pants, and refuse all forms of illegal work and moneymaking activity, even if jobs in the legal economy are impossible to find. Girls are told not to have children until they are married to a "good" black man who can help provide for a family with a legal job. They are told to wait and wait for Mr. Right even if that means, in a jobless ghetto, never having children at all.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
A new civil rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address meaningfully the racial realities of our time. Any racial justice movement, to be successful, must vigorously challenge the public consensus that underlies the prevailing system of control. Nooses, racial slurs, and overt bigotry are widely condemned by people across the political spectrum; they are understood to be remnants of the past, no longer reflective of the prevailing public consensus about race. Challenging these forms of racism is certainly necessary, as we must always remain vigilant, but it will do little to shake the foundations of the current system of control. The new caste system, unlike its predecessors, is officially colorblind. We must deal with it on its own terms.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...
— W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
If anyone thinks interracial "anything" is a big deal, they're probably inbred.
— M.B. Dallocchio
At the same time there was the good of the poor and the good of the rich. And the good of the whites, the blacks and the yellow races... More and more goods came into being, corresponding to each sect, race and class... People began to realise how much blood had been spilt in the name of a petty, doubtful good, in the name of the struggle of this petty good against what is belied to be evil. Sometimes the very concept of good became a scourge, a greater evil than evil itself.
— Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him, tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd want to stop one.
— Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.
— Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
Not all ‘whites’ are racists. Not all racists are ‘white.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
...and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us; do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Racism isn’t born, folks. It’s taught. I have a 2-year-old son. Know what he hates? Naps. End of list.
— Dennis Leary 1992
I wasn’t a person after all. I was simply this exotic thing for people to observe and investigate, an alien in any environment I was in.
— M.B. Dallocchio, Quixote in Ramadi: An Indigenous Account of Imperialism
Mislike me not for my complexion,The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,To whom I am a neighbor and near bred.Bring me the fairest creature northward born,Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles,And let us make incision for your loveTo prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
At first glance it seems strange that the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe. It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe.
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
That’s what imperialism is all about, shoving your language, religion, culture, and race down others’ throats and telling them that they’re beneath you – and it’s not unique to the West either.
— M.B. Dallocchio
Now I had won the gold medal. But it didn't mean anything, because I didn't have the right color skin.
— Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.
— Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Someone can tell you all your life that you’re inferior, but it doesn’t matter until you accept it and allow for validation. Once validation takes place, it’s then that the colonial malaise sets in like smallpox.
— M.B. Dallocchio
Can people of color be racist?” I reply, “The answer depends on your definition of racism.” If one defines racism as racial prejudice, the answer is yes. People of color can and do have racial prejudices. However, if one defines racism as a system of advantage based on race, the answer is no. People of color are not racist because they do not systematically benefit from racism. And equally important, there is no systematic cultural and institutional support or sanction for the racial bigotry of people of color. In my view, reserving the term racist only for behaviors committed by whites in the context of a white-dominated society is a way of acknowledging the ever-present power differential afforded whites by the culture and institutions that make up the system of advantage and continue to reinforce notions of white superiority. (Using the same logic, I reserve the word sexist for men. Though women can and do have gender-based prejudices, only men systematically benefit from sexism.)
— Paula S. Rothenberg, Race, Class, and Gender in the United States 5e & Pocket Style Manual 3e 01 Upd: An Integrated Study
[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22
And how easy it is to recognize the revenant shapes that the old unchanging enemies—racism, leader worship, superstition—assume when they reappear amongst us (often bodyguarded by their new apologists).
— Christopher Hitchens, Arguably: Selected Essays
There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn’t call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn’t think you could.
— Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man
....I wondered if there had been a more corroding and devastating attack upon the personalities of men than the idea of racial discrimination.
— Richard Wright
Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the 1950s an unwed white girl who became pregnant could go to a maternity home before her pregnancy showed, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, and return home to her community with no one the wiser. (White parents concocted stories of their daughters being given the opportunity to study for a semester with relatives.) She could then resume the role of the "nice" girl.Unwed pregnant black girls, on the other hand, were barred from maternity homes; they were threatened with jail or termination of welfare; and they were accused of using their sexuality in order to be eligible for larger welfare checks. Politicians regarded unwed pregnant black girls as a societal problem, declaring--as they continue to declare today--that they did not want taxpayers to support black illegitimate babies, and sought to control black female sexuality through sterilization legislation.
— Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation
Everything is acceptable until we stop accepting them.
— Peter Adejimi
…in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.
— Elbert Guillory
How's your grandpa?""Still worried that your blackness will infect me.""That's the plan. First you, then all the other blondes, and then on to brunettes and redheads. Once we have the womenfolk, all the babies will come out black, too. We all voted on the plan at the last Black Conspirators meeting.
— MaryJanice Davidson, Undead and Unworthy
We've been brainwashed into believing that it's a sin to discriminate. But discrimination doesn't mean racism
—  it means telling unlike things apart.
Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue.
— Shannon Celebi, Papa Was A Gypsy
Not a scar just psychological,But as material as roaches,Street corners and billy clubs. A wound reopened systematically,Inflicted with economic anarchy And "No Help Wanted" signs.
— Cabrini Gulag
I noticed that a woman on Goodreads said something like, “I was reading along in the beginning thinking, okay, a woman wrote this, there’s her picture, she’s a white lady, the narrator’s a white lady. And then suddenly she says something and you realize she’s a he. And then a few pages later you realize he’s ‘brown.’ I think the author could have been a little more up front about this.” :) It made me happy because in fact I thought everybody would pick the book up, read the back cover, and know they were dealing with a woman writer speaking through a male narrator. Which is a drag, actually, because if you didn’t know the author was a woman, you’d probably assume that an unmarked first-person narrator was a man, but if you knew she was a woman you’d assume her narrator was too. And if you didn’t know the race of the author, you’d probably assume the narrator was white. That’s pretty insidious, of course - it’s the way sexism and racism work. I’m not saying this woman on Goodreads was racist or sexist, I’m saying the fact that we make these assumptions signals that we live in a world that presumes that an unmarked voice is white and male, and that women and people of color will generally be writing from a limited perspective. I guess that’s obvious. But what I was saying about this comment was that it made me realize something else about ebooks - because I can only assume she read it as an ebook if she didn’t get the back jacket copy that explains who’s narrating. I love books, print books, and my own optimal experience of reading this book would be in print, with short breaks to periodically check out the Internet connections that the narrator’s making. But I do think that decontextualization is an interesting side-effect of the ebook…
— Barbara Browning
Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the - he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules - unchain Wall Street. They're gonna put y'all back in chains.
— Joe Biden
Race should be seen in one way, and one way only: on your marks, get set, go!
— Anthony Marais, Delusionism
Today's youth cannot escape the shadow of racism that has been passed down organically from parents and others who cling to a distorted image of American history, one informed by, and articulated from, a worldview permeated by white privilege. [sic], these biases are so hardwired that most of us have no idea how quickly and automatically they kick in and how enduring they can be.
— Thomas Norman DeWolf, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
Looks like somebody's got jungle fever.''That's not even the right kind of racist.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
The sad truth about bigotry is that most bigots either don't realize that they are bigots, or they convince themselves that their bigotry is perfectly justified.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' "I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.
— Dick Gregory
Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mindmost of our colors are amazingly the same.
— Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.
— Shirley Chisholm
Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara- do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized - in a word, savage.
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and it leads to a familiar place.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name"(as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)-the parents who search geneological trees in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law.-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history -All these are samples of racism.
— Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.
— Jack Bruce
The matter came up for judicial investigation, but as might have been expected, the white people concluded it was unnecessary to wait the result of the investigation—that it was preferable to hang the accused first and try him afterward.
— Ida B. Wells-Barnett
If human beings are the most intelligent creatures on earth, why is it that the other less intelligent creatures realise themselves in their group of spieces that they are the same despite the difference in colour or condition, while humam beings don't
— Nathanael Kanyinga
Initially, the purveyors of racism need no more than the silent acquiescence of the public ... [I]t is never too soon to confront bigotry and racism whenever, wherever, and in whatever form it raises its ugly head. It is incumbent upon all people to confront even the slightest hint of racist thought or action with zero tolerance.
— Hans J. Massaquoi, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
It’s often said that those who are unduly bothered by gays are latent homosexuals. Isn’t it possible that people obsessed with racism are themselves racist.
— Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama
The trick to realize that the boys who talk so much about being rejected that it seems like the’re proud of it aren’t necessarily sweeter or more sensitive than the Bababooey-spouting frat bullies who line up at clubs like SkyBar to run game on girls they want to date rape. There are plenty of nerds who fear women and aren’t sensitive, despite their marketing; they just dislike women in a new, exciting way. Timid racists aren’t sensitive because they lock their car doors when they see a black person on the street. They’re just too scared to get out of the car and shout the “N” word. Fear can be the result of admiration, or it can be a symptom of contempt. When I see squeamish guys passing over qualified women when they’re hiring for a job, or becoming tongue tied when a girl crashes their all-boy conversation at a party, I don’t give them credit for being awestruck. They’re reacting to the intimidating female as an intruder, an alien, and somebody they can’t relate to. It’s not a compliment to be made invisible.
— Julie Klausner, I Don't Care About Your Band: Lessons Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated
I never see the color of a person. I never notice the color of their eyes. But the thing that always gets my attention. Is when the spout out lies
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland
Ari: The serial number was now my new name. I was dehumanized. I was branded like an animal, but was treated worse. This is what racism can do to people.
— Christopher Huh, Keeping My Hope
Although I have always rejected this fear of the other, and the racism that it inevitably fuels, I have learned from experience that it is a deeply rooted need in the human psyche. at the slightest provocation we will put distance between ourselves and those we cannot or do not want to understand
— Susan Nathan, The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide
Poor health was not just the result of random acts, bad luck, bad behavior or unfortunate genetics. Deliberate public policy decision about housing, education, parks and streets were the key drivers of racial differences in mortality. Crime kept people off the streets and limited their ability to exercise. The lack of grocery stores limited dietary choices. The lack of primary care doctors and specialists in these communities made chronic disease care more difficult. The degradation and loss of hospital services in these communities affected hospital-based outcomes. … The chronic underfunding of critical health services at Cook County Hospital and other safety-net providers contributed to these poor outcomes as well. The deleterious impact of social structures such as urban poverty and racism on health has been called 'structural violence.
— David A. Ansell, County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you choose for yourself, the other God chose for you.
— Habeeb Akande
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you chose for yourself, the other God chose for you.
— Habeeb Akande
Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?'Jem: 'Yang guizi ... foreign devils.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
Andy once clipped a magazine article about how black dogs are always the last to be adopted at shelters and, therefore, more likely to be put down. Which is totally Dog Racism, if you ask me.
— Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door
It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.
— James     Baldwin, No Name in the Street
Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
— Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.
— John Stuart Mill
The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant
—  racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority.
Oddly, I had never thought of myself as a feminist. I had been denounced by certain radical feminist collectives as a ‘lackey’ for men. That charge was based on my having written and sung two albums of songs that my female accusers claimed elevated and praised men. Resenting that label, I had joined the majority of black women in America in denouncing feminism… . The feminists were right. The value of my life had been obliterated as much by being female as by being black and poor. Racism and sexism in America were equal partners in my oppression.
— Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power - A Black Woman's Story
Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things. Now the external reality matches their feeling; they really are better than the rest and maybe they'll even be remembered as such. These are the ambitious people, the overachievers. These are also, however, the people who go on these abominable talk shows where they can trade their psychoses for exposure on that box, modernity's ultimate achievement. Not that this tact, being ambitious, is not the preferred course of action. The reason is it's the equivalent of sticking your neck out which we all know is dangerous. Instead many act like they have no ambition whatsoever. Their necks come back in and they're safe. Only problem is now they're at everyone else's level, which we've seen is untenable. The remedy of course is that everyone else needs to be sunk. This helps explain racism's enduring popularity. If I myself don't appear to be markedly superior to everyone else at least I'm part of the better race, country, religion et cetera. This in turn reflects well on my individual worth. There are other options, of course. For example, you can constantly bemoan others' lack of moral worth by extension elevating yourself. Think of the average person's reaction to our clients. Do these people strike you as so truly righteous that they are viscerally pained by our clients' misdeeds or are they similarly flawed people looking for anything to hang their hat on? The latter obviously, they're vermin.
— Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity
Not long ago, having expressed some disagreements in print with an old comrade of long standing, I was sent a response that he had published in an obscure newspaper. This riposte referred to my opinions as ‘racist.’ I would obviously scorn to deny such an allegation on my own behalf. I would, rather, prefer to repudiate it on behalf of my former friend. He had known me for many years and cooperated with me on numerous projects, and I am quite confident that he would never have as a collaborator anyone he suspected of racial prejudice. But it does remind me, and not for the first time, that quarrels on the left have a tendency to become miniature treason trials, replete with all kinds of denunciation. There's a general tendency—not by any means confined to radicals but in some way specially associated with them—to believe that once the lowest motive for a dissenting position has been found, it must in some way be the real one.
— Christopher Hitchens
For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up.I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.
— Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef
While stationed in Fort Jackson, I experienced racial prejudice for the first time and came to the understanding that humans are not born with prejudice, but learn prejudice. Back home in South Dakota, I only knew one black American. The Scandinavians in my community treated him just like any other Swede; my family considered him a friend. My parents taught me, and I believed that all men are equal because God created all men in His image.One day during a week end furlough, I boarded a crowded city bus. As I walked down the aisle, I looked for an open seat. Looking towards the rear of the bus, I noticed three huge, young black men sitting on a bench in the back. I decided to squeeze onto the bench with them. As I sat down, a woman said in a very loud voice, "What is that white soldier doing in our part of the bus?"Neither my life experiences nor my education prepared me for what I experienced walking the streets of Fort Jackson. I saw water fountains for whites only, barbershops for blacks only, and separation for most aspects of Southern living. I discovered that the feelings of prejudice ran deeply amongst many of the people that we encountered. In fact, the blacks even trained separately from the whites during our military preparation, even though we all worked towards defending the United States of America.
— Oliver Omanson, Prisoner of War Number 21860: The World War II Memoirs of Oliver Omanson
We all inherit damage from the past. We spread it like a virus and don't generally think about it.
— Thomas Norman DeWolf, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls.
— Voltaire
Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they were still freemen in the Royal Navy. One famous black sailor wrote, "I liked this little ship very much. I now became the captian's steward, in which I was very happy; for I was extremely well treated by all on board, and I had the leisure to improve myself in reading and writing.
— Tony Williams, The Pox and the Covenant: Mather, Franklin, and the Epidemic That Changed America's Destiny
Simon shook his head. ‘The Nazis in Germany…the Japanese here in Shanghai…Treating people as less than human because of the shape of their faces or the sound of their names. Sometimes it feels like the whole damn world is unraveling.
— Daniel Kalla, The Far Side of the Sky
It was stupid not to let MacArthur finish off those rice eaters. Push 'em back.
— H.G. Bissinger
Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.
— Sara Shepard
Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie.
— Dean Koontz
It ain't always rocket science, sometimes a door is just a door.
— James Rollins, The Judas Strain
nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder
—  they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly.