Robert E. Lee Quotes

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

The general interest both of the white man and of the negroes requires that he should be kept as near to the condition of slavery as possible’

I was angry with the Church because they were not aggressively pointing out the immorality of racism.

Slavery is a slow poison to the morals of any community where it exists.

Modern technical civilization does not seem to be as well handled by the black man as by the white man in the United States

Whoever may be benefited by the results of this war, it will not be the present generation of negroes.

The confederacy’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not the equal of the white man and slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain.

There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us ... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are far removed from being placed on an equality with the white man ... I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact

The worst disease from which the society of our nation suffers is ... the treatment of the Negro.

This is a contest between the white man’s hope and black evil.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

Whites don’t like to see the nigger with too much … White people was afraid that money will make the nigger act like his own man.

The United States was created for white people …. When a negro has learned to read, he ceases to work.

Slavery ended a long time ago, but the institution of chattel slavery and the ideology of racial subordination that accompanied it have cast a long shadow. I speak here of the history of lynching throughout the country; the racially biased policing and judging in the South under Jim Crow and in the cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West to which blacks migrated after the First and Second World Wars; and the history of racial apartheid that ended only as a matter of law with the civil-rights movement. It should come as no surprise that in the post–civil rights era, race, far from being peripheral, has been central to the evolution of American social policy.

Blacks - and critically. black elites - remain skeptical of the procedural fairness of the criminal justice system, while white elites, Democrats and Republicans alike, are more willing to embrace a “law and order” approach to criminal law enforcement.

Segregation is a disease of white people, not of colored people.

We need never have white slaves in the South, because we have black ones. Our citizens, like those of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class. We should train and educate them to deserve the privileges and to perform the duties which society confers on them. Instead, by a low demagoguism depressing their self-respect by discourses on the equality of man, we had better excite their pride by reminding them that they do not fulfill the menial offices which white men do in other countries.

There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

A Negro has handicaps enough without having to pay taxes to support the education of white students to learn how to suppress him.

...on every sin which a colored man commits, the just white man must make a considerable discount, because of the colored man's antecedents. The heirs of slavery cannot with any sort of justice, be required to be as clear and straight and upright as the heirs of ancient freedom. And besides, whenever a colored man commits an unright action, upon his head is the guilt of only about one tenth of it, and upon your heads and mine and the rest of the white race lies fairly and justly the other nine tenths of the guilt.

White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White society created it; white institutions maintain it; and white society condones it.