Nadine Gordimer Quotes

The present system under the control of the whites trains the Negro to be white and at the same time convinces him of the impropriety or the impossibility of his becoming white... the Negros will have no outlet but to go down a blind alley, if the sort of education which they are now receiving is to enable them to find the way out of their present difficulties.

Whites they pretended to ignore, as they busily lived mirror-image white lives.

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

White people have always shown their superiority over blacks with their feet, moving out of black neighborhoods with the fear that their kids will turn into one of them. And now, through the magic of MTV, damned if it didn't turn out that way!

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.

Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites -- rather than fighting for jobs or education -- fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country.

The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image.

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

We are still conditioning people in this country and, indeed, all over the globe to the myth of white superiority. We are constantly being told that we don't have racism in this country anymore, but most of the people who are saying that are white. White people think it isn't happening because it isn't happening to them.

As Abraham Lincoln said, if there is to be a superior position, he would rather that superior position be assigned to the White race. That superior position must be protected by those who believe in White supremacy and they will do everything in their power to make sure that that position will always be throughout the generations.

Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.

To avoid the consequences of posterity the mulattos give the blacks a first class letting alone. There is a frantic stampede white-ward to escape from Jamaica's black mass.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

My dream was I was going to be an actor. Racism occurred to me. It dawned on me that I would not be an actor. It occurred to me that I was not white. It occurred to me that being what they call colored, being a Negro, was some kind of a disadvantage.

If you've been preached to, if you've been educated, if you've been raised to believe that America is the most racist, the most disgustingly vile nation in the history of the world, and you are white, then you can inoculate yourself. You can immunize yourself from being associated with that aspect of American history because you are white, by becoming anti-American, anti-this and anti-that.

The system of white supremacy is intended to make folks of color doubt themselves, their intelligence, their abilities, their very sanity. And so it's important to remember that folks of color know their own realities.

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas...

I think there's an awakening now of a realization that we too early congratulated ourselves on the end of racial prejudice and white supremacy. And that was a feeling that we had when I was president, that we had pretty much overcome that problem.

I don't sign for white people.

Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.