Russell Means Quotes

You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries.

America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants.

In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity.

America is an open society, more open than any other in the world. People of every race, of every color, of every culture are welcomed here to create a new life for themselves and their families. And what do these people who enter into the American mainstream have in common? English, our shared common language.

All my friends were black and Mexican. I was the only white kid in our group and had to work hard to be accepted. Year after year, we'd breakdance and we all became close and they labeled me "Vanilla" - like "Hey, Vanilla" and they knew I hated it, so of course they kept calling me it.

New Orleans was a thrilling place of all kinds of races, it was a dangerous place. It was really and truly the only international city on the continent of North America. There were all different races and everything was celebrated, and it was a place of difference, and everybody was different and it was so odd, the minute that America took over, the minute that the Louisiana territory became part of the United States of America, instantly you were either black or white. There was no nuance. and so a free man of color who could own property was suddenly not allowed to.

America's a melting pot, all races, cultures, religious choices.

Traditionally, the ideology of the United States nationhood perpetuated the myth that immigrants would shed their particularistic ethnic identities and loyalties. Eventually these “strangers” would be assimilated into a homogeneous body politic that was based on the equality of individual rights.

Every day our nation grows a little darker from massive nonwhite immigration, high nonwhite birthrate and increasing racial miscegenation.

The melting pot has sprung a leak.

Assimilation is what has made America great.

America is transplanted Europe, but a Europe that has not been disintegrated and scattered in the transplanting as in some Dispersion. Its colonies live here inextricably mingled, yet not homogeneous. They merge but they do not fuse.

Of the hundred million of the population of Greater France, almost sixty are not of European origin. If they are to be kept in permanent French allegiance their loyalty must be secured. The French flatter themselves that they are peculiarly successful in winning the affections of those over whom they rule. So be it, though it is probable they entertain a good many illusions in this respect.

Western societies will have to focus on the dangers of too rapid cultural change. That might involve some limits on the rate of immigration and on the kinds of immigrants who are permitted to enter.

There is this myth, that America is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things - hot dogs and apple pie - and ignoring the Chinese offerings.

One of the things that is so striking to me about the South, especially living here now as an adult, is that I see a lot more mixed-race couples than I saw when I was growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s. I feel like living across the color lines has become something that's more expected.

America is Tiger Woods country for a reason, and she elected Barack Obama to punctuate this new reality.

I have both Swedish and Iranian cultures ingrained in me, so that's always there. Plus my love of the U.S. began early on. But growing up in Sweden as one of the few people of color around was not easy by any means.

I was born in the Eighties, and at that time the idea of having a mixed-race child wasn't welcome. Then I was also an unusual mix nobody was used to seeing. So people weren't very accepting of me in the beginning, but later that changed.

I believe that the racial injustice which existed such a short time ago probably would have persisted longer if the color barrier had not been broken in baseball.

Our society offers little in the way of reeducation for those who have been torn away from their traditional culture and suddenly exposed to all the blandishments of mass culture-even the churches which follow the hillbillies to the city often make use of the same "hard sell" that the advertisers and politicians do.

I was born in the United States, I'm proud to be an American, I'm an American first. But obviously, I'm a Chinese-American. And growing up, my family, my parents, and I think rightly so didn't put us in Chinatown, didn't put us with our other ethnic group, but put us in mainstream America. They're thinking was that will help us assimilate into the mainstream and be a part of it. And it did. It certainly gave me tolerance of other people, of other races, of other ethnicities and I think that's helped make me a better person.

I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm not anti-immigration; I'm saying we've got big problems in our cities. It's not very smart to make the problem bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate.

Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech.

So that’s what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don’t know that. What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.