Jamaica Kincaid Quotes

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

Race is everything.

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

I never though much about race.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

I have compromised down the line. I've disliked it intensely in the old days when you were trying to talk race relations and they would not allow you to talk about the legitimacies of race relations. In the old days, you didn't talk about black, you talked about Eskimo or American Indian, and the American Indian was assumed not to be a problem area.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

Race is a very sensitive subject.

Well who's black and what is a black person?

I think that unlearning race for black people is more along the lines of seriously saying blackness isn't real, race isn't real.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

It is true that race is a social fiction, a myth perpetuated by a variety of peoples throughout the modern period, especially, to further their own gains at the expense of others.

I'm not going to play a racial game. With me, you're going to meet a guy named Shelby Steele, and you will have to get to know me as an individual. The color of my skin won't tell you anything. I think there's more and more of that in America.

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.

I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.

Kids know nothing about racism. They're taught that by adults.

The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.

The history of race relations in America is very different than something like the Holocaust.

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'