William Butler Yeats Quotes

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.

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

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.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

When you're white, the sky's the limit. When you're black, the limit's the sky.

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

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

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.

A lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who's more racist? Black people or white people? Black people. You know why? 'Cuz we hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

Race prejudice is the devil unchained.

If you're getting harassed, it's not helpful to know that racism has generally declined in America, when you're still experiencing it. That is a reality that we're still vulnerable to.

It's so hard for me to even acknowledge America without talking about race. If you look at our society, if you look at the prisons, if you look at the poverty and which side of the line the majority of people are, we have to acknowledge how we divide ourselves up, that there's racism alive in this country. And it's not in the law. It's in our minds. And that's what we have to actively battle.

I am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

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.

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.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn't as good as a white child.

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

Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.

I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.

Negrophobes exist. It is not hatred of the Negro, however, that motivates them; they lack the courage for that, or they have lost it. Hate is not inborn; it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognized guilt complexes. Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching. Each to his own side of the street.

The media really only pays attention to white people. I think America is really racist.