John Laurens Quotes

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

For all Sunday’s denouncing of sins, he never mentioned rotten, stinking, hell-born race prejudice. It is pitiable when we think of the thousands of white men in this country, claiming to be ministers of the gospel,—claiming to be ambassadors of God, representatives of Jesus Christ; and yet sitting down quietly in the midst of this spreading leprosy of race prejudice, and doing nothing to stay its ravages, content to have it spread, and to curse, as it is doing, both races,—embittering the Negro and debasing the white man.

Of all the bigotries that ravage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason, it is not rooted in faith, it aspires to no ideal.

If prejudice could reason, it would dispel itself.

We may be more sophisticated in how we hide it, but there are still so many phobias in this world, whether it's Islamophobia, xenophobia or homophobia. I've been trying to do things that expose and help teach and draw attention to all of the 'isms' and how we do or don't deal with them in our world.

Both racism and homophobia come from a sense of the presumed and the unknown.

I don't know how racists live with their racism. We need to take the road of love. I don't think folks are born that way; it's learned and taught out of fear.

There is a cost to ignorance and the hate.

A fear of Moslems is rational.

Islam is a malignant cancer.

Had they taken a poll in Philadelphia in 1776, [the founders] would have scrapped the whole idea of independence. A third of the country was for it, a third of the country was against it, and the remaining third, in the old human way, was waiting to see who came out on top.

“Slavery always degrades labor. The white people who work with their hands are ranked with the other laborers— the slaves ... They feel that they are degraded and despised.

I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

To be white and male is not to be sexist and racist.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

Anybody who is racist, I just I think they are an idiot.

Yes, there is racism. There is discrimination. Mr. Trump may have the most powerful job in the world, but that does not make him a respectful person.

White people scare the crap out of me.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

I would be ignorant to say colorism doesn't exist; it's gross and disgusting.

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

Do you know how big of an insult that is to me - to say that I had to be brave to confront some ignorant white folks?

Most racist people are like sheep. They are people without backbones.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred that never dies. Violence that begins with the Jews never ends with them. All of this is true. What's also true is that anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred in the world because individual people have sustained it in every generation. It cannot be defeated until we look these people and their ideologies in the face.