John McWhorter Quotes

For us, #BlackLivesMatter is really a re-humanization project. It's a way for us to love each other again, to love ourselves, and to project that love into the world so that we can transform it.

Learn to love being black.

Black is beautiful.

White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

The Nation of Islam's main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn't want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people's neighborhoods?

Our leader will not be a white man with a Black heart, nor a Black man with a white heart, but a Black man with a Black heart.

A race-transcendent politics is most likely to succeed when the white community takes responsibility for overcoming its racism, not when the black community decides to forget it.

I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.

I'm black because I was born this way. I'm proud of it. Thank God I am who I am.

I feel good being a black woman; I've always felt good.

Even when black folks make me angry, I know that the foundation is that I love us. I want us to win, and I want us to have all the things that we deserve in the world. And that's driven by love.

Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.

When you say that you are a race man, it means that you embrace the entire black community regardless of the hue, whether somebody is very light and could pass for possibly white or someone is very dark.

When you're in a black group, you have to keep in mind you're not black. You just have to be sensitive. We have to be appreciative that the black nationalist struggle is a nationalist struggle.

I love being black in America, and especially being black in Hollywood.

When I say, I don't care what white people think, I mean that.

No, we are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love.

I've never been one to carry race on my sleeve, and I've never been one to really use my race.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I've never tried to run away from my race. I was born a black man. You know that in your bones as soon as you are able to understand this country... My approach to life about race is, I don't see the difference between black people and white people.

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...