Gary Sheffield Quotes

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

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

And I'd be lying if I told you that as a black man in baseball I hadn't gone through worse times than my teammates.

To the average white man, a courthouse even in Mississippi is a place where justice is dispensed. To me, the black man, it is a place where justice is dispensed with.

As a black, you find you have to be two or three times better than a white even to play. And when it comes to front-office jobs, management believes you'll never be as good.

I can identify many different experiences that I've had over the course of my life and things that I've witnessed where it seemed that black men, specifically me or someone else may have got the, you know, different treatment than somebody else would in that same situation.

The second I bring up race in the sport, I'm immediately race-baiting. But I can point out clear facts, where no other champion has been treated like me.

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.

The young Obama's lack of playing time on the high school basketball team was due more to his ability than the coach's preference for white players.

I was told by the general manager that a white player had received a higher raise than me. Because white people required more money to live than black people. That is why I wasn't going to get a raise.

We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.

I remember playing on pretty much an all-minority youth team and going to some of the tournaments north of Cincinnati and not being able to stay with host families where all the other teams were staying with host families.

Clearly, the Obama presidency hasn't wiped out racial prejudices.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me.

I am astonished at the strong feeling of dislike and contempt—I might almost say hatred—which the bulk of the whites have for their black neighbours.

One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.

When we finally got school buses for African American students in Georgia, the state legislature ordained that the front bumpers be painted black. Not even the school busses could be equal.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.

… a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through

The average white person now feels that anti-white bias is a bigger problem than other forms of racial discrimination.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

I had no expectations of white people at all.

How do I have to continue to excessively prove myself and always be the underdog? I don't get the respect I deserve, and that leads me to believe that maybe it is a colour issue.

The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.