Patti LaBelle Quotes

We are not race blind. Of course we still have racial tensions in this country. But the United States of America has made enormous progress in race relations, and it is still the best place on Earth to be a minority.

I don't believe in blanket statements on race.

The fact is that racism, despite all the doomsayers, has diminished.

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

Race has no place in American life or law.

Friction between the races will pass away in proportion as the black man … can produce something that the white man wants or respects in the commercial world.

I remember being a teenager, I never thought that I'd live in a society that was not segregated. It happened.

I live in Brooklyn, and there's so many interracial couples in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, you don't talk about race like that.

We were in denial about the extent to which Britain had cured itself of the poison of racism.

Unfortunately, I don't know many black people.

The problem with most liberals - myself included - is we tend to think we're post-racial: that we've got a handle on things because we're not racists.

I always wanted to eat with a Negro,” Grandma said. Yeah, well I always wanted to eat with a boney- assed old white woman,” Lula said. “So I guess this works out good.

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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

I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'

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.

It demonstrates to his simple mind in the most positive manner that we have no prejudice against him on account of his race, and that while he behaves himself he will be treated the same as a white man.

We will fight race destruction through thick and thin and never CO exist voluntarily with it.

I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

We would like to get to a point in our society where people really are colorblind and this message would not have to be told anymore. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.

We see through the eyes of children that they're not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They're not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone's skin.

The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet.