Allan Boesak Quotes

I know that so many of us hoped that, by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.

I think there's an awakening now of a realization that we too early congratulated ourselves on the end of racial prejudice and white supremacy. And that was a feeling that we had when I was president, that we had pretty much overcome that problem.

Racial problems can't be easily reconciled with a pat account about racism and discrimination that lets us sort of relax into saying when we finally get this right, when we get rid of racism, when we reach the post-racial society, everything is going to be okay. Well, no, because along the way here, as we've not yet been in this racial nirvana, facts on the ground have been created.

It's time we become comfortable with the uncomfortable conversations about race...Instead of being color blind, we need to be color brave.

The national conversation around white entitlement, around institutionalized racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, came about in large part because of the widening and broadening of our understanding of inequality. That conversation was begun by Occupy.

The myth of integration as propounded under the banner of the liberal ideology must be cracked because it makes people believe that something is being achieved when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a soporfic to the blacks while salving the consciences of the few guilt-stricken whites.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

In 2016, the conversation of the black experience is so broad, and it's very raw. I mean, c'mon, we have a black president. That's a major thing, and there are so many other significant occurrences that have come from the '60s and '70s up to now.

Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

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.

It is a lie that America is racist

Each one of us must ask how we contribute to the racist climate that seems only to grow stronger in spite of our best efforts at legislative and social remedies. Whether we are victims of racism or its perpetrators, we must begin on our knees.

I just don't feel the whole white guilt and pussy-footing around race issues. I'm completely above all that. I've never worried about what anyone might think of me 'cause I've always believed that the true of heart recognize the true of heart.

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

We live in a really racist culture and it's got to be addressed.

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.

The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.

People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

I never want to position myself where I seem like an ambassador of anti-racism. I am fortunate enough to say that I've never experienced extreme amounts of racism, but a lot of my friends do.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.