Regina King Quotes

I know that I am a black man in a white world. . . I know that I never had it made.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.

When you're white, the sky's the limit. When you're black, the limit's the sky.

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that.

It's deeply rooted in the American psyche. Black men have always been viewed as the other, which leads to a different application of the laws. The current laws are an obscenity. More black men are locked up for using pot than white folk are for far more serious crimes.

The media really only pays attention to white people. I think America is really racist.

I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.

If you are the normal white American, truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.

Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

New York white youth were killing victims; that was a 'sociological' problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody.

The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

See, the Black man gotta fly to get to something the white man can walk to.

White individuals that have been going to jail. Segregation still exists; discrimination still exists. A few isolated white people whose individual acts are designed to eliminate this, that or, or the next thing but, yet, it is never eliminated is in no way impressive to me.

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

In a law enforcement situation, black people are not always treated the same as white people would be.

Stop and search is an integral cog in a racially disproportionate criminal justice system.

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.

Most people who are not of color, their parents didn't need to tell them how to act around police or what to do if they ever got pulled over. Never, not once. We are taught that in the black neighborhoods. I've been profiled and pulled over, so it's not like I don't know.

I think the O.J. Simpson trial was a revelation about the ongoing patterns of racial difference in American society.

Black folks tell their kids they have to be twice as good as a white person? Well, if I tell a child of mine that, or that they have to be careful - that this is what a cop would do if you do this - they think something is wrong with them. I tell them death is better.

What happens to Black Folks today, happens to White Folks tomorrow.

Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.