Randall Kennedy Quotes

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

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.

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.

To believe that the United States is post-racial requires an almost incomprehensible inability or unwillingness to stare truth in the face.

We need to have a more thoughtful, two-sided conversation about racial issues in this country.

I started a lecture series that was inspired by my reporting on race in America. The 'Black in America' series launched on CNN in 2007 as an opportunity to freshen the national conversation on race.

Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.

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.

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...

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

I think race in America is a huge one. That's something that needs to be confronted, certainly.

I do not claim to be an expert on race in America.

The mantra for the Obama campaign and their surrogates has focused on one thing regarding race, which is to take every opportunity to depict the Republican Party a group of rich white racists.

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.

I know that so many of us hoped that, by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

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

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

Race always comes up in the conversation of Detroit.

There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate.

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

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.

It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.

I believe race is too heavy a burden to carry into the 21st century. It's time to lay it down. We all came here in different ships, but now we're all in the same boat.

I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.