Bill Shorten Quotes

You know and we have about 60 to 70 percent black men in prison today and it's because of the negativity they have in their own hearts.

That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated.

There are poor people of color in this country whose bodies, locked in cages, enrich the prison-industrial complex.

I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.

When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem.

White Americans believe we've made more progress since the end of slavery in 1865 than do black Americans for whom '12 Years a Slave' documents a collective memory, passed down in the genes and by the lore of generations.

When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

There are opportunities that I have because I'm a white dude, and it's controversial because that's just the way that the world we live in kind of is.

As African-Americans, we often spend our time and energy blaming other people for the problems we see around us.

I don't totally believe that all of the politicians see a problem with the gap between the scores of black children and other groups. I believe that many politicians think this has been the way it has always been, so what's the problem?

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

When you allow racial disparity and institutional inequity to affect one part of the country, eventually it's coming back to get everyone.

One way of cutting down the crime rate is to abort every Black baby.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

White men are taking advantage of black men all over the world because black men are disunited.

There's no lobby for more spending on Black people in the cities.

Why aren’t Black people this outraged over Black-on-Black killings?.

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,

I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color - and attempting to help people who have been released from prison attempting to 're-enter' into a society that never seemed to have much use to them in the first place.

Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy.

Some prison officials are determined to keep the people they lock in cages as ignorant as possible about the racial, social, and political forces that have made the United States the most punitive nation on earth. Perhaps they worry the truth might actually set the captives free.

Violence of all forms is wreaking havoc in communities across the country, disproportionately impacting communities of color and shaving half a million years of life off our collective lifespan. But it doesn't have to be this way.

We're all burdened by our history of racial inequality. It's created a kind of smog that we all breathe in, and it has prevented us from being healthy.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.