Cornel West Quotes

America's a melting pot, all races, cultures, religious choices.

This great son of the world, Madiba, showed us the way. Whether you are white, black yellow or brown you are all God's children, come together, work together and God will show you the way.

Now look at the crowd. We’ve got everybody here tonight: Black, white, Asian, Latinos—and guess what? President Obama says we can all stay! God Bless America!

In Harlem, I got all my black friends. But when I go downtown, I got black, white, Asian, Indian friends. There's no borders, no barriers.

I grew up in a place that felt very integrated.

One of the most special things about the city of New Orleans is how diverse a people we really are. There's been a new generation of individuals that have all grown up together, so I don't really see myself as a White mayor. I've never seen New Orleans as a Black city.

America to me is where I grew up: in Brooklyn, around other black and Latino people who helped and loved each other. I just want to show people that America doesn't have to be this 'I'm in the NRA, blah blah blah' type of place.

One of my key areas of unification is to champion multiracialism. Multiracialism is vital to unity.

There is not a black America and a white America; a Latino America, an Asian America. There is the United States of America.

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.'

The unity in diversity of the United States is one of the country's greatest strengths.

If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.

The people of America are red, white, black, yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the "in between." They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new mankind--a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future.

In my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white.

When I was in Mecca I noticed that their, they had no color problem. That they had people there whose eyes were blue and people there whose eyes were black, people whose skin was white, people whose skin was black, people whose hair was blond, people whose hair was black, from the whitest white person to the blackest black person.

America's strength is that it is capable of accepting people into its communities.

Growing up as a young black girl in Potomac, Maryland was easy. I had a Rainbow Coalition of friends of all ethnicities, and we would carelessly skip around our elementary school like the powerless version of Captain Planet's Planeteers.

I grew up in a neighborhood with blacks and Puerto Ricans and Italians, the whole gamut, so conveying unity has always meant a lot to me.

My schools were quite diverse - those who serve their country come from every race and religion - and so the military schools I attended were a wonderful melting pot.

From the newest arrivals to our Native American brothers and sisters, we are one America.

I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want.

This is a country where Jews and Arabs speak without fear. Where people come from different cultures the world over. Where everyone becomes Brazilian rapidly.

A common language is critical to cohesion and national identity in an ethnically diverse society

Communal franchise is wrong in principle and harmful in practice; the time has come in Fiji for all races to get out of the thin water-tight compartments and start thinking in terms of residents of Fiji

I'm Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.