Ken Griffey Jr. Quotes

I don't sign for white people.

Santa Claus was white and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I'm going to blackmail you.I said, 'Momma, why don't they call it 'whitemail'? They lie too.'

When I countered that Archie Bunker didn't have to put down a race of people to say that, he replied, 'and you're the dumbest white kid I've ever met.'

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.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

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.

Protesting the color of a man's skin is not a worthy protest.

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

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.

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.

Stop saying you're not racist because you have a friend that's black. That's like saying you're not a pedophile because you have a friend that's a kid.

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

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.

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.

White people have always shown their superiority over blacks with their feet, moving out of black neighborhoods with the fear that their kids will turn into one of them. And now, through the magic of MTV, damned if it didn't turn out that way!

I remember being told by my parents when I was 4 that I couldn't go to an amusement park advertised on TV because colored kids weren't allowed there. That was a bit of a shock and really stayed with me over the years. That was how I first learned about racial segregation. Fortunately, I took it as a challenge, early on, and it motivated me. You never know how a child might respond to discrimination. It goes both ways. Some kids become embittered.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.

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.

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

Symbolic racism is hurtful and it is especially hurtful to Black children who get called Black Pete in school and grow up with the sense that they are inferior to white kids.

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born.