Gary Sheffield Quotes

My personal opinion is that you can't be racist towards white people. You can be prejudiced about them, but being prejudiced isn't an illegal act, whereas being racist can be.

Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir.

It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

If your response to the first black president is to say they weren't born in this country... you might be a white supremacist.

While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

You can't get much whiter than me.

As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.

If I were white, I'd get less criticism.

Since anti-racist individuals did not control mass media, the media became the primary tool that would be used and is still used to convince black viewers, and everyone else, of black inferiority.

Clearly, the Obama presidency hasn't wiped out racial prejudices.

There will always be that dreadful monster prejudice to do extra battle against because of their color.

In colleges throughout America, students are taught to have disdain for the white race. I know this sounds incredible, or at least exaggerated. It is neither.

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

All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life, but with the product of these conditions, the Negro himself.

There are people out there like Fox News who, every time a Black person complains in public of how we are treated in our society, is accused of “playing the race card.”

There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.

Ronald Reagan is the President who is more responsible than any for the fact that white racism is both tolerated and even fashionable again in America.

Some white people are privileged, some aren't. Some black people are, some aren't. It's strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it's making a generalization - a negative one - based on skin color.

The most glaring aspect of white privilege is that when someone is described neutrally - without indicating color or ethnicity - more often than not, people will assume that the person is white. That assumption indicates an uncomfortable truth: in our society, whiteness determines humanity.

For all of the continued awareness of systemic violence and oppression, there isn't a lot of talk about that psychological toll of racism, at least in white circles and white media.

As a white fighter, you get twice as much criticism.

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.