Norman Lear Quotes

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

Archie Bunker used to call me 'the laziest white kid he'd ever met.'

When I countered that Archie Bunker didn't have to put down a race of people to say that, he replied, 'and you're the dumbest white kid I've ever met.'

If you look hard enough, you can find race issues and racism in everything. I know people who say, 'See, I don't play pool 'cuz that's where the white ball chase the black ball off the table. So I prefer bowling, where the big black ball knock down the white pins with the red necks.'

It is truly not fun to be the family that sticks out in an all-white community. On the other side, I have five brothers and sisters; we all look exactly the same, and we're very, very tight. The lessons about race were not pleasant, but there are things that I loved about my childhood.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

I realized there was racism because people thought, 'Oh, if you like roll 'n' roll, that makes you like a white kid.'

We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them 'graham crackers.'

From 'Chappelle's Show' to 'Tosh.0,' there's so much race comedy. It's overdone.

My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.

The liberal is in fact appeasing his own conscience… Being white, he possesses the natural passport to the exclusive pool of white privilege… Yet, since he identifies with the blacks, he moves around his white circles…with a lighter load, feeing he is not like the rest. However, at the back of his mind is the constant reminder that he is quite comfortable as things stand… Although he does not vote for the Nationalists…he feels secure under the protection offered by the Nationalists and subconsciously shuns the idea of change.

It is one of the peculiar phases of Anglo-Saxon conceit to refuse to believe that every black man does not want to be white.

Some of the most racist things that I've ever heard come out of people that are on the air at ESPN. There are some of the biggest racists in sports commentating, and you take it for what it is.

My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.

I grew up in a largely black community during the '70s and '80s that scoffed at 'white' music. That music - folk, rock, some disco - was considered soulless, aberrant, just one more example of the Caucasian's desire to scream and yell and demand whatever their privilege and perpetual adolescence dictated they should demand.

Nobody calls me a racist when I do redneck jokes. Jeff Foxworthy can do as many 'You might be a redneck jokes' as he wants, but I'm telling you as soon as a guy like that does a black joke or something - 'How dare you!' I totally think it's unfair.

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 remember when I was a kid being called names, including the 'n' word. The first time that happened, it really bothered me. But most of the people I dealt with were all white. Most of my close friends were white.

I don't want them hip white people coming up to me and calling me no n - - or telling me n - - jokes. I don't like it.

When you get called the n-word, as a black person you can do anything. It's like getting a gold star in Super Mario Brothers and junk. I hear the music when I hear the n-word. I get right into it; I get really into it. You can do anything. You could be in a fancy restaurant - just start throwing poop at the walls. People be like, 'What are you doing?' 'Someone called him the n-word.

White people made up the n-word, they knew about racial jokes before anybody, and in their old movies and old cartoons they made fun of everybody, especially black folks. Racial jokes were not new to them.

I get offended when people say, 'So, being a white rapper...and growing up white...after being born white...' It's all I ever hear!

My dad was a complicated man. He was a huge racist, my dad, but he still tried to be a good father, you know? Like, he would tell me that Santa Claus was black - that way, when I found out he didn't exist, it wouldn't be that big a let down.

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.

I was doing cartoons and mocking white liberals, mocking the attitude of government who said to go slow, while intending to do absolutely nothing for black people, then called Negroes. And I had a lot of fun and I expressed a lot of anger. That was a thing that was important to know at that time. As I was emerging into more and more into politics that I was angry.