Dick Gregory Quotes

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.

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.

It's more dangerous to be black in America...If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk in a way that you have to be corrected.

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

I’d rather be a lamppost in Harlem than the mayor of any town in Georgia.

I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation.

'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.

We've done a very poor job at really reflecting on our legacy of racial inequality... You see it in the South, but it's everywhere.

I tell you what: I bet Jerry Jones would not trade places with a 75-year black man in Chicago. I bet Joel Klatt would not trade places with a 30-year old black guy from Chicago or Watts. I bet he wouldn't do that. You know why? It's great to know that I'm white and a male in America.

I spent my life navigating systems built upon me - a black child in America - not making it out.

I have to be honest: I feel like I live in a constant state of rage, and I think a lot of black people do.

There are so many - namely black and brown bodies - who have experienced a different America than what the mainstream American flag symbolizes.

A lot of people of color and the Black Lives Matter movement will talk about what's really happening, but it seems like you can't get the black president to say something that's obvious about what's happening to black people in this country.

I was fortunate to be raised in Seattle, which was amazing, but that doesn't take away from the fact I was still a black kid growing up in America.

The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there.

If you were born white, you automatically have a monstrous advantage educationally, economically, culturally, and within the society.

Throughout every presidency since the heist of our country from indigenous peoples, the black American experience has been exceptional in its discomfort. And no chief executive of this great nation has, in earnest, developed a unique plan to remedy that discomfort.

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.

If you are the normal white American, truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.

The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

White individuals that have been going to jail. Segregation still exists; discrimination still exists. A few isolated white people whose individual acts are designed to eliminate this, that or, or the next thing but, yet, it is never eliminated is in no way impressive to me.