Joe Thomas Quotes

Some people resented the fact I was trying to break a white man's record.

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

I went to an all white school where I dealt with racism.

For generations, even many otherwise decent white Southerners learned to despise black people.

We are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... he has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

Blacks essentially play the race card, when necessary as a counter to white privilege.

[T]he agents are white Southerners who have been influenced by the mores of the community. To maintain their status, they have to be friendly with the local police and people who have been promoting segregation.

I don’t believe in Black majority rule ever—not even in 1000 years.

This county was formed for the white man, not for the black man.

… white racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture (of private discrimination and segregation) that has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.

We never discuss race until something bad happens.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.

I never ceased to be surprised when southern whites, at their homes or clubs, told racial jokes and spoke so derogatorily of blacks while longtime servants, for whom they quite clearly had some affection, were well within earshot.

When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad.

I think the most harmful belief passed on to me - not always directly - was the belief that whatever I did as a Negro, however much we Negroes achieved, despite the presence of some enlightened whites, white society as a whole enjoyed being racists in the secret core of their being and would never, ever give that up.

As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral.

Black reporters are as capable of racism as anyone else.

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.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

It's a real uphill challenge to battle the white-guyness.

But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.

You may call me a Klansman if you will, but, potentially, every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically and politically is concerned, and there is no use lying.

'I Spy' represents the absence of the tension of the black man or black woman or anyone of that color walking in, so that the white racist person can become entertaining to a viewer.