Harry S. Truman Quotes

I mean, we're not talking about simply racism, we're taking about white supremacy.

I am for the negro against the crocodile, but for the white man against the negro.

America is a white man's country.

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

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.

He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.

Now, personally, I am baffled by the concept of racial prejudice. Why hate someone based on the color of their skin when, if you take the time to get to know them as a human being, you can find so many other things to hate them for?

As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

The control of China by Japan … is sharply and bitterly antagonistic to the white man’s civilization. This would be the worst calamity…. The future belongs to the white race; it does not belong to the yellow, not the black, not the olive-colored. It belongs to the blond man …

The haughty American nation ... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack.

Racism is wrong, racism is very dangerous.

Today a racist is synonymous with race hatred. Hating someone is a pretty unpleasant thing and few people are capable of hating others. Long-term hatred is a pathological disorder.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.

There's white racist DNA running through the synapses of his or her brain tissue. They will kill their own kind, defend the enemies of their kind or anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of the milky white way of life.

I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.

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 those who are not racially pure are mere chaff.

When it comes to the Yellow Races overruning the world, you may laugh ... [The Chinese] have neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except by intermarriage. One American marine could stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort.

I think that [Donald] Trump is frankly a bigot. He has a racist history.

Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.

These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.

Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir.

White supremacy is not just a social arrangement: it is a race-based faith.