Pearl S. Buck Quotes

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored—it is a shadow over all of us.

As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.

For generations, even many otherwise decent white Southerners learned to despise black people.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience

One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.

There's a little racism out here, always was, and always will be.

It's just a fact. You've got to deal with racism wherever you go.

If I’d been talking about black trash, I might be lynched. If I was talking about white trash, I’d merely be another torchbearer in an ongoing national lynching.

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

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

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.

America's racist, so what do you expect.

It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it's coming from.

The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling because when I was a little girl I remember the horror of the East St. Louis race riot.

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

There's a lot of racism still alive and still active.

I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.

You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.