John Ridley Quotes

What did you expect? I don’t know why you’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

All my life had been dominated by a sign, often invisible but no less real for that, which said: 'Reserved for Europeans Only.'

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.

The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.

We cannot consent to purchase a shameful peace by leaving the coloured population in a position in which they stood before the war with not even the ordinary civil rights which the government of the Cape Colony has long conceded.

I don't believe in segregation. I believe in slavery.

Slavery was our original sin. Race, our continuing dilemma.

Our people historically have gone through a lot. That is our story. You can trace it all the way back to slavery. But it is incumbent upon everyone, no matter what field, to make it easier on the next generation.

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

What's unique about America is that the country itself was built upon oppression, it's in the very foundation.

Most of us came here in chains and most of you came here to escape your chains. Your freedom was our slavery, and therein lies the bitter difference in the way we look at life.

The sunlight that has brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

We, the Black people of America, were chosen by Allah: Not to be "special" in the sense that we are better than others, but chosen because of the uniqueness of our position inside of America, and 460 years under slavery, neo-slavery, and injustice, to carry a message to the whole of humanity.

There’s no question whatsoever that conquered people have been treated in a terrible way. Being conquered by the Romans was not a fate you would wish on anyone. But the fact is that the net result has been that those parts of Europe conquered by the Romans have been the most advanced parts of Europe for centuries. Similarly, when someone black says . . . ‘I’m worse off because of slavery,’ there’s no way in hell you can say that with a straight face. If you’re going to base reparations on the difference between where blacks today would be if it were not for slavery, then blacks would have to pay reparations to white people.

If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that.

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

Why is Slavery so much condemn'd and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways. Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.