Shelby Steele Quotes

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.

I think we are aware that post-racialism isn't real, right? I mean, I hope so. I kind of joke that we're post-post-racial.

Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let's not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it's not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly.

We would be silly to say that race issues don't exist in 2014.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

I'm always going to say, 'I think there is racism' and I want to stamp it out.

I'm not one to spend my life asking the question, 'Is there racism in America?' Certainly there is. But I want to do something about it.

I think sports is one of the places where race plays itself out publicly. Although we pretend it doesn't.

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty.

There's sort of a persistent misperception that talking about race is black folk's burden. Ultimately, only men can end sexism, and only white people can end racism.

You can't delete racism. It's like a cigarette. You can't stop smoking if you don't want to, and you can't stop racism if people don't want to. But I'll do everything I can to help.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

Yeah, race exists. Racism is still here, and it's doing well. Turn on the news. I don't think me and my comedy can really change that.

Racism is essentially natural, it's old fashioned it's an evolutionary phase that we're going through. Ultimately it wont exist.

I went to an all white school where I dealt with racism.

I have nothing to do with racism in America; it was here when I got here.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

I don't think that the country is ever ready to have the conversation about race.

Everybody is mouthing the platitudes in the law and everywhere else, where it serves a purpose that we're a color-blind society. But we're not. We're as color conscious as we've ever been.

Race is a fact of life and is not a problem unless people make it out to be so

What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists?

There was nothing postracial about my experience, and there still isn't.