Thabo Mbeki Quotes

At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: 'Raise your hands!' Then I have said: 'Move your hands,' and I've said 'Look at your hands - different colors representing different people. You are the Rainbow People of God.'

In order for us, black and white, to disenthrall ourselves from the harshest slavemaster, racism, we must disinter our buried history.... We are all the Pilgrim, setting out on this journey.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side, not the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races.

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

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

I know that so many of us hoped that, by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.

If a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy. And what America is trying to do is pass laws to force whites to pretend that they want Negroes into their schools or into - in their places of employment.

We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.

After my election there was talk of a postracial America. And such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic.

Obviously, In The Heat Of The Night was a landmark movie because the timing was perfect. It was in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.

Racial problems can't be easily reconciled with a pat account about racism and discrimination that lets us sort of relax into saying when we finally get this right, when we get rid of racism, when we reach the post-racial society, everything is going to be okay. Well, no, because along the way here, as we've not yet been in this racial nirvana, facts on the ground have been created.

The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

There are definitely racial problems in this country [the USA]. Comedy is a way we can figure out how to solve it, and how to solve it without making people really angry.

The idea of racial inferiority or superiority is foreign to me. I can't feel inferior or superior to another man because of race, or in any way antagonistic to him. I judge by the individual, not by his race, and have always done so. I would rather have one of my children marry into a good family of any race than into a bad family of any other race.

Sydney Poitier, who said to Lester Maddox, Guess who's not coming to dinner? Never got a dinner!

A man I admire and respect - Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.

God did not create the strife between races, nor did He intend for it to be that way. Strife between races and ethnic groups comes from sin-and sin resides in the human heart. The Bible says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (James 4:1). When one group or one race claims it is superior to another, pride has taken control-and pride is a sin.Instead, God wants us to learn to accept each other and love each other-and this becomes possible, as we turn our lives over to Christ and allow Him to change us from within.

You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Obama has placed himself in perfect political position: he spent the 2008 campaign convincing the American people that he's a racial unifier rather than a divider, without any evidence to prove it.