Jacques Barzun Quotes

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

Race is a very sensitive subject.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.

When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'

Race, to me, is a very blurry thing.

Race is everything.

Regarding the idea of race, .. no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Race seems to embody a fact as simple and as obvious as the noonday sun, but if that is so, why the endless wrangling about the idea and the facts of race. What is a race? How can it be recognized? Who constitute the several races?.

The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.

Race is a part of every conversation in America, whether you know it or not.

Well who's black and what is a black person?

I never though much about race.

We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong. We all differ visibly in the color of our skin.

Nothing would make me believe that a biologically pure race exists today.

I definitely am not white.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

You can't have anything valuable in your house. Niggers will break in and take it all! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people don't like about black people. It's like our own personal civil war. On one side, there's black people. On the other, you've got niggers. The niggers have got to go. I love black people, but I hate niggers. I am tired of niggers. Tired, tired, tired.

I very much dislike the word "race," and I never use it. I use the word "racist." Race is not a fact. There is only one race: human. Skin color is less than 2 percent of the DNA.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

White people have always shown their superiority over blacks with their feet, moving out of black neighborhoods with the fear that their kids will turn into one of them. And now, through the magic of MTV, damned if it didn't turn out that way!

I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.