Don Winslow Quotes

The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.

You don't have to be African American to really enjoy 'Frisky Business'. But as far as being black, a lot of people in New York have been stopped and frisked, so that hits home for them.

The George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair is one of the most important and clarifying moments in American history.

We think of Shots Fired as almost an autopsy of Ferguson that shows the events from every street in the house. And, in dealing with these two murders of a black victim and a white victim, we show the ways that communities and the media deal with victims differently based on race.

Black folks tell their kids they have to be twice as good as a white person? Well, if I tell a child of mine that, or that they have to be careful - that this is what a cop would do if you do this - they think something is wrong with them. I tell them death is better.

Historically it has been a touchy subject, especially in the south where I am from, people don't really talk about it. If they do talk about it, it is often talked about negatively. Nowadays in light of the Black Lives Matter movement I think people should pay attention to these lives also. I think the Black community will really embrace the film [Moonlight]. It is about us. It is real.

I think most people, in their lifetime, have seen somebody who has the ability to use force lord it over other individuals. I see a lot of those videos, and I am disturbed by people being yanked out of their cars, and it seems to be a disproportionate amount of young black men. I'm disturbed by it.

Bill Clinton did everything in opposition to Black Lives Matter and the things that animate the existence of the Democrat Party today.

I talked to a lot of Black Lives activists in various states. What I learned is that the relationship of police departments around the country with the black community is far, far more severe and awful than I had originally known.

We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn't happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was.

A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture.

Many White people are not sensitive to the kind of abuse that African Americans, especially younger African Americans, receive at the hands of police officers and police departments. I think for most Whites their experience with the police has been good or neutral because they don't interact with the police as much as those in the Black community.

You can be as critical as you want of Black Lives Matter. I'm critical of him, too. But to say that they have caused shooting of police officers, I think is a bridge too far.

I've had a dozen people tell me, maybe more, 'What would have happened if Michael Brown had shot and killed Darren Wilson? Do you think he would be free right now? Do you think he would not have been charged by now?' People just see this manifest double-standard in front of them that's coming at the long line of a whole bunch of grievances that have built up over time because of the dynamics of Ferguson and frankly, the dynamics of race in America more broadly.

Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

I don't encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anybody's death, but I do think that when the white public uses its press to magnify the fact that there are the lives of white hostages at stake, they don't say "hostages," every paper says "white hostages." They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin.

I don't see white police officers slamming the heads of little white boys into police cars.

For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

When I was perceived as a black man I became a threat to public safety. When I was dressed as myself, it was my safety that was threatened.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

Hillary Clinton's done a terrible job for the African-Americans.

The police killings of unarmed African Americans has got to stop.

The efforts of Black Lives Matter to bring attention to the all-too-frequent instances of unjustified violence being used by policemen may not be paying off as quickly as some might hope.

There's no question that there's been a breach in the trust between urban - especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.

I think "post-racial" is a dangerous trap. You can fall into complacency and give your complicity a much more dangerous character.