Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Quotes

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'

I remember people saying: 'You look funny, your hair is so black, you have a flat nose,' but I didn't think of it being racism, and I still don't. But there was a sense of difference, of being an outsider.

Race prejudice has nothing to do with color. It has to do with being the stranger.

I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.

My tenure at 'The Daily Show' started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.

People are always afraid of the unknown - and banding together against the Thing That Is Different From Us is a time-honoured tradition for rallying the masses.

You tend to be afraid when someone seems foreign to you. But if you aren't careful, that can lead to bigotry.

I figure if people don't want to make the distinction between a Muslim and a terrorist, then why should I make a distinction between good scared white people and racists?

You see, that's the problem I have with 'you people.'

We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.

The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail…unlike is normally situated at a safe distance.

With most people, strangers are not only enemies, but inferiors.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own

Those goddamn coons. They drive up and down Lake Shore Drive in front of my house. I hate them. I’m scared of them, and I think I’ll move to Switzerland where there just aren’t any.

This is why we have racism, really: because people are confronting the unknown, and they don't like that.

I remember I was in a San Francisco nightclub, and I started talking to some girl, and it was like, 'Hey, what's going on, what's your name?' You know, 'Where are you from?' I go, 'I'm from Iran.' And literally, she just looked at me and walked away.

The people who hate immigrants are people who have never met them!

Racism seduces us with its desire to categorize, shutting out the living and breathing and 'different' world all around us.

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia.

In times of economic distress, it's only natural for people - and Americans have done this for many years - to look for a scapegoat. Depending on where you live in this country, the scapegoats are either, frankly, Mexicans or Muslims. So, you know, God save you if you happened to be a Mexican Muslim in America right now.

It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

People are just afraid of things too much … Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I'm black. They could do the same just because I'm American.

Since these early days, I have seen and have experienced many types of discrimination and all of them were rooted in the fear of people that were different than the majority.

You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, Of people whose skin is a different shade. You've got to be carefully taught.

It's just amazing that there are so many prejudices even now.