Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
—Desmond Tutu (b.1931) South African Clergyman
Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum hatred for a minimum reason.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72) American Jewish Rabbi
He (Bob Marley) had this idea, it was kind of a virologist idea, he believed he could cure racism and hate, literally cure it by injecting music and love into people’s lives. One day he was scheduled to perform at a peace concert, gunmen came to his house and shot him down. Two days later he walked out on that stage and sang. Somebody asked him why. He said the people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.
—Bob Marley (1945–81) Jamaican Musician, Singer, Songwriter
I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind’s eye…. But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes…. Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
—Medgar Evers (1925–63) American Civil Rights Activist
And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.
—Albert Memmi (1920–2020) Tunisian Novelist, Essayist
The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they’re better than other people. You’re damn right we’re better. We’re better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. . . .we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we’ll look them in the eye without apology.
—Walker Percy (1916–90) American Novelist
I realize that I’m black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody’s wish.
—Michael Jordan (b.1963) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American Sociologist, Social Reformer
I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro… this is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
There aren’t too many people ready to die for racism. They’ll kill for racism but they won’t die for racism.
—Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000) American Lawyer, Civil Rights Leader, Feminist, Activist
Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites—rather than fighting for jobs or education—fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.
—Jesse Jackson (b.1941) American Baptist Civil Rights Activist, Minister
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
When a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman.
—Medgar Evers (1925–63) American Civil Rights Activist
Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.
—Albert Memmi (1920–2020) Tunisian Novelist, Essayist
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
—Thurgood Marshall (1908–93) American Jurist
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
Where do you think I’d be next week if I didn’t know how to shout and holler and make the public take notice? I’d be poor and I’d probably be down in my home town, washing windows or running an elevator and saying
—Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) American Sportsperson
I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute—a white skin.
—Desmond Tutu (b.1931) South African Clergyman
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war.
—Haile Selassie
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
I wasn’t always black… There was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
In the racial picture things will never be as they once were. History has reached a turning point, here and over the world.
—Medgar Evers (1925–63) American Civil Rights Activist
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 (1897–1962) American Novelist
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher