Colson Whitehead Quotes

I've always been talking about race in some sort of capacity.

I never really had to put much thought into my race, and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color, and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.

Liberals, many of them, not all of them, but many of them are obsessed with race. They see everything through a filter of race.

That's the way blacks have been encouraged to think: that we got to stick together. You've got a situation today where if a black person says he thinks O.J. Simpson's guilty, other blacks will cut their eyes at him and say, 'You ought to go somewhere and sit down and shut up.'

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.

When I come out of the box, I don't come out of the box as racial.

Blackness better defines who I am philosophically and socially than whiteness does.

I think the word 'diverse' is a cancerous word because it's life. It's a PC way of saying 'non-white,' and it ultimately suggests that white is the standard.

Obviously, I'm not not black. But this is one thing I do know after years and years of working with a lot of black players and black commentators on many networks: That if you go to the place of you're telling a black man, or a black woman, that 'You should know your place and stay in it,' when you get to there, them's fighting words.

Never have I once identified myself as white.

I think we are aware that post-racialism isn't real, right? I mean, I hope so. I kind of joke that we're post-post-racial.

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.

Sure, I look like a white man. But my heart is as black as anyone's here.

Well who's black and what is a black person?

I think sports is one of the places where race plays itself out publicly. Although we pretend it doesn't.

What I really hoped to do with my work was to at least be able to define my relationship to race.

The less I talk about being black, the better.

I never though much about race.

Everyone knows I'm black. I am who I am. This is the person that Lester Sr. and June Holt raised, and I make no apology for it. At the same time, I'm never going to pull a race card to get what I want. You can't have it both ways.

On the one hand, there is no reason that a black person needs to live a portion of his or her life being concerned about the people of color around him. On the other hand, if you don't you're crazy.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

Every single thing in my life is built around race.

We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.

On issues carrying as much emotional freight as race - and there aren't many - a U.S. senator needs to speak with care and consistency. Otherwise, he could find people speaking at his own retirement tribute.