Jesmyn Ward Quotes

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.

People make jokes about how black people are the first ones to be killed off.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

There will always be that dreadful monster prejudice to do extra battle against because of their color.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they're looting, if you see a white family it says they're looking for food.

Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.

In the South the white men used to call all Black men “boy” until they got to be old enough to call them “uncle.” It was sex-the feat of sexual competition. When they used to get liquored up and talk they would always say, “The schoolroom leads to the bedroom” to justify school segregation.

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.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.

Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro.

The Southern Negro is not an incurably ignorant ape. The Southern white masses are not biologically degenerate.

I think it's impossible to be a young black male from the South, born to an era I was born in, and not have a clear sense of what race really means in the country.

I am just a young black man living my dream, people are trying to smear my reputation.

It doesn't even feel like racism is real. It just feels like the weirdest ploy, like we're just being had on so many levels. It's even kind of funny when you think about it. A reason not to like someone is 'because you're black.' C'mon, man. How dumb is that?

I am an African-American woman of dark skin tone, and there are very specific roles that are usually given to African-American women of a darker hue. Let's start with 'Once on This Island': peasant girl. Let's go to 'The Color Purple': young girl, beaten. Let's go to 'Ragtime': Her baby's taken.

My view is I should have been Miss Massillonian, and I wasn't. I think the reason I wasn't was because I was black. Frankly, I was told later I should have been. But they were afraid if they elected a black girl as Miss Massillonian, it would have been a scandal.

I'm African-American. There are more eyes on me than anybody. They're going to take the negative before the positive.

As a black woman, I feel like I have a unique experience that we don't often see in media portrayals of the South.

I'm glad Hurricane Katrina happened. It taught us an important lesson: black people can't swim.

I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward. It's the hardest to be a woman.

Constance L. Rice, co-director of the Los Angeles of the Advancement Project, told the Times that Seltzer might have been influenced by David Simon's fake ghetto series, "The Wire." It figures. Isn't this sexism? Isn't this a double standard? They're hard on this young woman for her fake ghetto book, yet praise these White guys for theirs. So there's a big market in downing Black men.

Murder and lying comes easy for white people.

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

It's interesting, gender versus race. I think people say that to women more: 'Oh, you're my favorite female.' They wouldn't say 'favorite black comic.'

For me her image, the triptych, became a study of the weight the black male figure carries, given the fact that they are targeted by the police, and are constantly in danger of being misread in public spaces.