Talib Kweli Quotes

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

I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.

I've been in this struggle for many years now. I understand racism. I understand that there are a lot of people in this country who don't care about the problems of the inner city. We have to fight every day that we get up for every little thing that we get. And so I keep struggling.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it's difficult for 'poor people' - poor white people, brown people - to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are.

I think that racism has gotten more subtle, and it's not even racism anymore: it's placism. Like where you live or whether you went to community college or Harvard, and it exists within the race.

I was in a high school where everybody was a click better off.

I myself am a descendant of the European tribes, now called nations, that have established political, military, and economic dominance over the world. I confess to my sin of privilege and my reluctance to forego the perks my race and class afford me.

Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country’s shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap.

There's this false notion that you have to separate and choose between issues of class and issues of race. What people do when they say that you need to separate class from race is that they are really just saying that people of color should come second.

We listened to Donald Trump speak at the debate about 'Stop and Frisk.' I don't think it's a good way to go through life. I don't think that's going to solve any of our problems. It's actually going to make racial tension a whole lot worse, and it's going to make us feel like we're singled out.

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.

You are not born racist. You are born into a racist society. And like anything else, if you can learn it, you can unlearn it. But some people choose not to unlearn it, because they're afraid they'll lose power if they share with other people. We are afraid of sharing power. That's what it's all about.

Especially as a teenager, I was always being racially profiled by the police. You just see all this injustice, and you want to do something about it, but you don't know how.

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

I wouldn't want to generalize, but we still do live in a society that's sexist and racist and addicted to class and has the ridiculous idea that if you have money you're smarter, which Donald Trump by himself should be able to disprove.

We have to be honest, we have to be truthful and speak to the one dirty secret in American life, and that is racism.

Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born.

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

BLM (Black Lives Matter) is pathetic! Obama you are pathetic! Everyone should be locked behind bars like animals!