Trevor Paglen Quotes

The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them.

My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.

Racism is if there are spectators or, outside the field of play, there are movements to discrimination, but, on the field of play, I deny that there is racism.

Racism always exists cheek by jowl with, inside, and alongside culture and class. As a rule, it is inseparable from them. That is why, for example, food, language and names assume such importance in racial prejudice.

We don't have as much prejudice as we did 40 years ago, but today it is more educated.

If I go into a club now, all the blonde girls leave my corner and all the black girls come into my corner. It's as if I'm racist towards white girls!

We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.

There are lots of research, of course, saying that a vast majority of us have been exposed to racial biases and stereotypes and, to some extent, we've internalized them, because that's so ubiquitous. That's why I'm so bored with the conversation about who's a racist and who's not.

He was murdered by every member of the gospel who has remained silent about racial discrimination—who has hidden behind the stained glass windows of his church.. He was murdered by every Negro who accepted segregation.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

All God’s dangers ain’t White men.

This county was formed for the white man, not for the black man.

A smart black guy is confronting for most people. But that's on them, not on me.

It is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color 'criminals' and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.

I honestly thought that since I didn't associate myself with any people or groups who were outwardly racist, and I didn't act in a way that struck me as racist, that this meant that I myself was not a racist, and that racism wasn't a huge issue.

Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past.

Behavior is individual and projecting an individual behavior upon an entire race is a version of racism. Put yourself in someone else's shoes: imagine what it would be like going thru life having this type of projection on you.

We all, white and black, carry various biases around with us.

The more afraid we are of the shadow of racism, the more conscious we might become of our own unsuspected biases.

As a black man, sometimes you can't tell if what you're seeing has underlying bigotry, or it's a normal conversation and you're being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there.

Some of the most destructive forms of racism - like being denied a home loan or being passed on for a job where you are the most qualified candidate - are hard to measure in real time.

I'm not the authority on the subject. I'm a middle-aged white guy speaking about racism. I'm just finding it a really difficult subject to broach.

This is really honest: I have to remind myself not to look another black man as a threat.

Yes, for blacks, racism functions without the actual presence of whites, just as for whites it functions without the actual presence of blacks! Beliefs, conventions, history do the work.

The most anyone could reasonably say about institutional racism is that the 'evidence is far from conclusive.