Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood--to hate himself.

I want to be identified with the negro; until he gets his rights, we shall never have ours.

We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think.

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

I'm black because I was born this way. I'm proud of it. Thank God I am who I am.

In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism...scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity.

If we're united, I wouldn't care about a White school board getting me a little something. The hell with the school board; that's the White supremacy board and the White supremacy board wants you reading stupid books rooted in the idea of White supremacy. I don't want a thing to do with White supremacy.

In order for us, black and white, to disenthrall ourselves from the harshest slavemaster, racism, we must disinter our buried history.... We are all the Pilgrim, setting out on this journey.

I was doing cartoons and mocking white liberals, mocking the attitude of government who said to go slow, while intending to do absolutely nothing for black people, then called Negroes. And I had a lot of fun and I expressed a lot of anger. That was a thing that was important to know at that time. As I was emerging into more and more into politics that I was angry.

The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.

We will fight race destruction through thick and thin and never CO exist voluntarily with it.

I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

I'll also say, yes, I think the change in black consciuosness in recent years has made me more sensitive to injustice in every area of my life.

White society will not listen to preaching. They will not listen to their liberals. Liberalism has not grown within white society, and we blacks cannot stand idly by watching the situation. We can only generate a response from white society when we, as blacks, speak with a black voice and say what we want. Now has come the time when we, as blacks, must articulate what we want, and put it across to the white man, and from a position of strength.

I am the equal of any white man. I want you to feel the same way.

We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.

the enemies of the colored race who are opposed to their progress and freedom assert that there is no virtue among them.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.

If you are going to organize and ask for commitment, you cannot go to the most desperately poor. They are not likely to take action. If you stand on a man's head and push it into the dirt, he may not even see the heel of your boot. But if his whole face is already above ground, he can see your heel and he can see freedom ahead.

People and systems count on our silence to keep us exactly where we are.... in a world that wants us to whisper, I choose to yell.

The fight against racism must be seen as a revolutionary one.

We cannot just be nonracist. We really do need to be antiracist.