Tim Wise Quotes

If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.

When you're white, the sky's the limit. When you're black, the limit's the sky.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate.

There was a while when I was feeling like, 'Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this'.

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

Most people don't think about race as much as I do. They don't have to.

We are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... he has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

Blacks essentially play the race card, when necessary as a counter to white privilege.

To the average white man, a courthouse even in Mississippi is a place where justice is dispensed. To me, the black man, it is a place where justice is dispensed with.

When we finally got school buses for African American students in Georgia, the state legislature ordained that the front bumpers be painted black. Not even the school busses could be equal.

Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society... Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy.

America is decidedly not 'post-racial.'

Systemic racism is a problem from every aspect of life.

I couldn't see why a black man wasn't allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy.

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. - Ta

See, the Black man gotta fly to get to something the white man can walk to.

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

At the heart of the fractured soul of America is the frightening chasm of race.

Well, the white race in America is the same way. As individuals it is impossible for them to escape the collective crime committed against the Negroes in this country, collectively.

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.