Clarice Taylor Quotes

Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

I know how difficult it is to be not just a woman, but a black woman, and I know how much we get attacked and our voices aren't heard. I experience it every single day.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.

Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism.

A major problem for Black women, and all people of color, when we are challenged to oppose anti-Semitism, is our profound scepticism that white people can actually be oppressed.

Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged.

African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.

I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away.

The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

Nobody calls on black women to find out what they're thinking about because we're always part of somebody else's agenda.

We [Blacks] wear the mask that grins and lies It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

White supremacy and the sickness that it produces disallows us [Blacks] to perceive reality properly.

If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

It worked for a long time. Each "stood" by the other. When the poor white lynched a Negro, the rich white protected him in court; the preacher protected him in church; the policeman looked away, the sheriff was easily intimidated, the juries rarely convicted, and the newspapers were "reasonable.

To be white and male is not to be sexist and racist.

Now, white America is using blacks, exploiting them, enabling their dependency so that they can say, we are innocent of racism, and therefore we are legitimate.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

There's still a really divisive residue in our nation that's called racism and prejudice and oppression and sexism.

'Get Out,' of course, is the surprise hit movie that Peele wrote and directed about a black man named Chris, who discovers that his white girlfriend's family is running a nasty racist conspiracy.

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.

We live in a world that does not recognize virtually anyone outside of the white male or the beautiful white woman who has to be an object of desire and affection.

There is some group of Americans who are really, really curious to understand how we ended up at this point, where every week it seems like you can turn on your TV and see some sort of abuse being heaped on black people.