Margaret Cho Quotes

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.

The essence of American racism is disrespect.

I do not want to name any individual names, but I felt like when I was working in Hollywood, there were some fellow colleagues of mine who didn't even look me in the eyes because I was Asian.

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.

Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Santa Claus was white and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I'm going to blackmail you.I said, 'Momma, why don't they call it 'whitemail'? They lie too.'

Archie Bunker used to call me 'the laziest white kid he'd ever met.'

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.

...racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.

I remember when I was a kid being called names, including the 'n' word. The first time that happened, it really bothered me. But most of the people I dealt with were all white. Most of my close friends were white.

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

There's racism everywhere.

America is a white man's country.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.

I think that one of the positions we have taken around the question of race, is that we already know. We know. We know. We know. And so we don't need to look at it again. And yet everybody is still upset. Everybody is still being driven by their outrageous imagination to the point of killing people because they feel that a black man in front of them is a demon, or the Incredible Hulk.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.

Either because I was an athlete or because I was black - probably both - there seemed to be a clear assumption that I wouldn't be up to the work.

I mean, but obviously, in people's eyes, it still - it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they're white?