W. E. B. Du Bois Quotes

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

Race prejudice is the devil unchained.

I remember what it was like to grow up in the South in the 1960s and 1970s. Discrimination isn’t something that’s easy to oppose. It doesn’t always stare you in the face. It moves in the shadows. And sometimes it shrouds itself within the very laws meant to protect us.

The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

Until we have a serious discussion, this problem [racism] will continue to occur.

It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.

Racism is cruel and unjust. It cuts deep and lingers long in individual and community memories. And it is not a thing of the past....We all have a duty to do what we can to turn this around.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

You cannot be responsible for Jim Crow. You can not be responsible for racism. This is much more a problem for the person exercising racism.You are confronted with the reality of racism when you go in the streets, when the eyes of others come upon you. [James] Baldwin goes back with you to all the experiences you went through and gives a name to them, and explains why it is like this.

I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories... We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust... We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

If I’d been talking about black trash, I might be lynched. If I was talking about white trash, I’d merely be another torchbearer in an ongoing national lynching.

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.