Marcus Smart Quotes

Of course I've felt racism.

In the real world, there's probably nothing more horrifying than racism. Living racism is a horrifying experience. And then, having to normalize it and internalize it.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Codifying discrimination in our laws should be something we read about in American history, not on the front pages of today's American newspapers and magazines.

Color had been made the mark of enslavement and was taken to be also the mark of inferiority; for prejudice does not reason, or it would not be prejudice

If a white man says, "give me liberty or give me death" in any country, white men all over the world stand up and applaud. But if a black man says the same thing--the exact same words--he is created like a dangerous criminal.

I got kicked out of four high schools just because people took issue with the colour of my skin. As if I could help the colour I was born.

Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That's what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep... Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.

Each one of my movies is going to be about one of these different social demons. The first one, being 'Get Out,' is about race and neglect and marginalization.

We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.

As far back as I can remember, I knew there was something wrong with our way of life when people could be mistreated because of the color of their skin.

Whites would accuse you of causing trouble when all you were doing was acting like a normal human being instead of cringing.

Racism is not new. It was not invented just for you. So get bigger than that stuff.

I remember going to a theater once, and there was a stairway that wound its way out to the back. And I was very young, a small child, and I said to my mom, 'Why are those people going up those stairs?' And she said, 'You know, I don't know how to tell you this, I don't know how to explain it, but it won't always be that way, because it's wrong.'

I think about the history of racism in this country all the time.

I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic, but it's true.

Racism is one of the worst forms of torture because it's directed at something you never asked for and something you can't change.

The haughty American nation ... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack.

I struggle with racism every day

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

We've all had some level of injustice, whether 20 years in prison, or 20 minutes sitting in your car waiting for a police officer to determine your future. Or even a few moments in an elevator with some woman clutching her purse thinking you're going to rob her ¾ regardless of celebrity, that has happened to me.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

With black people, there are 50 Hitlers over the course of history.