John McWhorter Quotes

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

As for the not-black black president issue - white people can imagine blacks worse off than them, no problem. And now they can imagine blacks better off, no problem. But they still can't imagine black people who are just like them. That's the real problem. That's racism. Not being able to believe that those others are actually just like you.

If you took away the color of Barack Obama's skin, nobody right now would be paying him any attention.

I didn't elect [Barack] Obama because he's a black; I voted for Obama because he was the right person at the time.

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.

A black boxer's career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.

If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

I Hated Duke. I Felt Like They Only Recruited Black Players That Were Uncle Toms.

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

Symbolic racism is hurtful and it is especially hurtful to Black children who get called Black Pete in school and grow up with the sense that they are inferior to white kids.

When I was perceived as a black man I became a threat to public safety. When I was dressed as myself, it was my safety that was threatened.

I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward. It's the hardest to be a woman.

[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

I know I am judged unfairly by my physical characteristics and ostracized because of that so I say, "Yes, I'm a black man."

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all.

If you're black, you can't just be ordinary. All successful black people are extraordinary.

I grew during segregation in an all-black segregated neighborhood with segregated schools, etcetera. I was raised by a great father, my hero, who I much admired. So, I never really had anxiety in the way that someone like Obama would have. When he walks down the street alone, since no one knows who his mother is, they're just going to see him as a black guy.

Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.

I don't see myself a Great Black Hope. I'm just a golfer who happens to be black and Asian. It doesn't matter whether they're white, black, brown or green.

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."

Well, there were definitely elements of my rise in radio that had to do with my being black. But going back as far as Walter Winchell, Army Archerd and Hedda Hopper, legendary wags would grab a radio microphone and talk about what Errol Flynn and other stars were up to.

You weigh how much you should criticize the President because hes black.

Either because I was an athlete or because I was black - probably both - there seemed to be a clear assumption that I wouldn't be up to the work.

I mean, but obviously, in people's eyes, it still - it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they're white?

I'm racist against non-black people.