Orlando Jones Quotes

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

It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

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.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.

The black community sees itself as one group, and they are all experiencing the same experiences as a group with racism and whatnot, growing up in this country.

It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend.

I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away.

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?

The American economy, the American society, the American unconscious are all racist.

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.

Being black in America - especially as I was growing up - the feeling of oppression, the feeling of being outcast, the feeling of not having a voice was part of my life.

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.

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.

I wanted to remind myself and others of the old Jim Crow, so that we can remind ourselves that we're still living in the new Jim Crow. I feel it's important to dress in the fashion of the times.

You know what? As a black person, you see so much racism. Films are no different than the government, politics - it's everywhere. It's not exclusively film. It's infuriating to see it in film. But my being in film changes things.

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

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.

We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don't get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again.

Every black man in Chicago walks through the world differently, and I think what young black boys do is observe, and that's what gives them their road map.

We question these issues of race and struggle and white privilege because we know that those issues are real and because those issues have real implications in black communities. And white supremacy is not only dangerous, but it is deadly.

Democrats don't understand what is wrong in the black community or how to fix it. If they do, they don't care.