Dee Rees Quotes

Myself, I happen to be married to an African-American woman, and we're together 17 years. We took a few trips to the South 15 years ago, and we were sobered by some of the reactions people had - how subtle or not-so-subtle their reactions were.

I grew up in Houston, and I remember we had separate drinking fountains, and black people sat in the balcony of the theater... We had an African-American housekeeper growing up who was really like my second mother. I thought it was silly - hatred just because of the color of somebody's skin.

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

When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

Racism is essentially natural, it's old fashioned it's an evolutionary phase that we're going through. Ultimately it wont exist.

My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, 'Look how far we've come,' because we hadn't come very far, to say the least. Although Jackson's population was half white and half black, I didn't have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

Most people don't think about race as much as I do. They don't have to.

Would it be better if I'd married a Negro woman? Would they treat my child any better? Erect fewer barriers?

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

A coloured man can tell, in five seconds dead, whether a white man likes him or not.

Because of unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, [freed slaves] never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country.

The force of prejudice against marriage between black and white was such that no one would dare to brave it. It is not the legal penalty which is feared but a condemnation a thousand times more terrible.

The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination

The children of the white families in town were not permitted to associate with me, because my father was committing the then unpardonable crime, in Southern eyes, of educating negroes.

The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deep seated…

It’s time we faced facts. Southern people just don’t like Black people.

… defiling the race line

If you seat these black buggers, the whole South will walk out.

When I came here, there were two groups of United Church Women, one black and one white.

We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.

Racism is here and will always exist, but we can't use it as a crutch.

Racism is felt the most definitely in grassroots football.

Racism was a big part of our community. I'm not going to revisit history, and I'm not going to call out those communities, but the communities we grew up around, we were treated like second- or third-class citizens.