Jackie Robinson Quotes

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

I've always been the underdog, and I've always had to work much harder than the next person just to get a look. But I feel like that's Black people as a whole, to be honest with you. We have to do so much more and work so much harder to get certain kinds of looks within this industry.

I am tired of people telling me that black people are beneath a standard when we have to be twice as good all the time.

Racial inequality has gotten worse in the last years because any time you have a moribund economy, the people who historically have had more problems getting jobs have suffered. And that, I think, is triggering a lot of the animosity.

I learned early that I had to work harder than the white kids and harder than the boys.

But in my life, the vast majority of people that have really afforded me the opportunity to succeed were white folks.

As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge.

Black employers are just as negative as the white employers concerning inner-city workers.

It's more dangerous to be black in America...If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk in a way that you have to be corrected.

No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe they [Blacks] may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.

Tonight the Negro knows from his radio and television that a Congo native can be a locomotive engineer, but in Jackson [Mississippi] he cannot even drive a garbage truck.

… a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through

Black men with criminal records are the most severely disadvantaged group in the labor market.

And if you want to make many of our black leaders angry, just tell them that racism is not the number problem that black Americans face.

You spend your whole lifetime in your occupation, actually making life clever, easy and convenient for white people. But when you have to get transportation home, you are denied an equal accommodation. Our existence was for the white man's comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human.

I went to Wellesley College, and it was really hard for me to get a job after I graduated. I would go into places where I would not see any black people at all in Boston - like, zero. And then in publishing in New York City, it was pretty much the same. I knew that it wasn't about the value of my work.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated, that we are indeed messy, that we do our best with what we've been given. We come into the world exactly like you. It's just that there are circumstances in the culture that are dictated and put on our lives that we have to fight against.

As a black, you find you have to be two or three times better than a white even to play. And when it comes to front-office jobs, management believes you'll never be as good.

While many Americans agree that 'the system is rigged' economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.

I am black in a predominantly white industry, and I have been luckier than most.

Some issues just need to be dealt with - that we're still dealing with in the world, with police brutality and racism.

The reality is we have allowed systemic racism to continue through all these years.

Racism is systemic: It's oppression that's built into the laws, legislation, into the way neighborhoods are policed, and into job opportunities and health care and education.

I respect the police officers, but something you learn as a young black man in this country is that... life is a little bit different for you even though, on the surface, it seems to be the same.