David Shields Quotes

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Policy, for the most part, has been made by white people in America, not by people of color.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite.

If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.

There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get it; I'm just not very interested in it.

The history of slavery in this country has affected not only how black people see themselves, but how white people see black people as well, and the roles they're meant to play... I'm aware of it, as a person of color.

Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade.

White people are so fragile, God bless 'em. 'Well, I didn't own slaves.' No you didn't. Nobody is asking you to take personal responsibility for this. But you're a beneficiary of a system that did. Just own that and move on.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

In the U.S., while individual whites might be against racism, they still benefit from their group's control. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won't be one of them.

I was born on an island with 96 percent of the people black. But all the power and the economy was in the hands of white people who only formed four per cent.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.

Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.

I am hopeful about any future for whites in this country, but not entirely optimistic.

White Americans today don't know what in the world to do because when they put us behind them, that's where they made their mistake... they put us behind them, and we watched every move they made.

It is true that as people, we tend to remember only the positive. With time, the grim details fade away, and as a species we survive on this notion. In our desire to gloss over the undeniable macabre parts of our American history, we forget. That amnesia manifests itself, especially when dealing with the plight of black men.

Negroes' problem is that they do not have their egos. That's why our churches end up having a white service, because our preacher is not arrogant enough to take God's word, so he have to go and get some white fellow's agenda and put it in his church.

What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people, 'Do they hate him?' That takes a lot of nerve.

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

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.