Ishmael Reed Quotes

Racialized oppression and dehumanization is woven into the very fabric of our nation — the effects of which can be seen in the lawful lynching of black and brown people by the police, and the mass incarceration of black and brown lives in the prison industrial complex,

Americans live in a country where African-American young men are twenty-five times more likely to lose their lives at the hands of the police than their white counterparts.

We are less than honest and commit a grave error if we insist that what happened to Rodney G. King was isolated and an exceptional case. The poor know better.

The fact that we live in a world where black people have to strategize so they're not brutalized by police is insane.

No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.

The problem is not cop killers...it's killer cops.

There is police brutality. People of color have been targeted by police.

You should be able to criticize civil servants for what you think is wrongdoing without being painted as a cop-hater. I don't feel the police are all corrupt, however I do feel they are suffering from institutional racism and there needs to be a top-to-bottom examination of the way they practice and the way they criminalize young black and brown males. The fact that they seem to have backed off from it seems to suggest they realize they overreacted on me and it looks bad.

I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand, but instead was given a bullet.

Racial profiling has to stop.

Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.

When you live in a world in which juveniles are much more likely to be stopped—or if stopped, be arrested, or if arrested, be adjudicated—if they are Black, then all of the indicators associated with prior criminal history are going to be serving effectively as a proxy for race.

An increase in press coverage of police shootings isn’t the same thing as an increase in police shootings.

Freddie Gray was a story I followed closer than others, for whatever reason, in this larger narrative of police brutality.

I know a lot of police officers who are on the force to do the right thing to protect people. But how can you deny this pattern, this disturbing pattern, Alton Sterling, Mr. Castile in my own community, Philando Castile, but then Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland?

Race is something that's always haunted American policing.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

If you asked me why I went to jail, the easiest explanation would be to say, 'Because I'm black.'

Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.

Being a cop is often seeing the worst of the human condition and behavior. With all of that said, there is no reason that Mike Brown and also Eric Garner are dead today - except bad policing, excessive force, and the hunt-and-capture-prey mentality many thrill-seeking cops have adapted.

There are cops who be racially profiling.

The stuff that the cops do and the stuff that happens, what bothers us, the black community, is it's so blatant... It's so out in the open that if you can't see it, then you are part of the problem because it is very obvious.

I've been harassed by police my whole life and seen people who looked like me treated like animals at the hands of law enforcement.