Bernadette Devlin Quotes

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

To attempt to explain a system like segregation to a 6 year child is a very difficult thing.

With what moral authority can they [the U. S.] speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated?

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they're so visible. They're out in the open. When they're visible, it's a lot easier to deal with them.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

Civil rights in this country is unfinished business, and racism is alive and well.

I believe that racism is a problem, and we need to do something about it.

I was born in a ghetto on the North Side of Pittsburgh. I was born as Emmett Till was dying and the civil rights era was being born.

Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives.

I fight against racism and bigotry because I care about the people who are experiencing it.

There are so many people out there struggling with racism, or their sexuality or where they're brought up or how wealthy their family was ans these issues are not hidden, they were in the late 19 century and they're still important today.

There's something not right with a person's soul when they judge another human being to be less adequate because of their gender or skin color.

Racism is a human problem and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated.

Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.

The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

You face racism in small and large ways.

White people just don't want their slaves to be free. That's the whole thing.

We must treat the disease of racism. This means we must understand the disease.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

If a Black American may not enter this theater, this black Egyptian will not enter.