Spike Lee Quotes

I don't sign for white people.

White supremacy is so deep-seated that it's hard to see it eliminated. But we could definitely push it back.

Any negro who occupies a position that was given to him by the white man, if you analyze his function, his function never enables him to really take a firm, uncompromising, militant stand on problems that confront our people.

It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism.

Black Power alone is no more insurance against social injustice than white power.

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

There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

If the white man ain't the devil, he's been aiming at the history of the Americans.

The national conversation around white entitlement, around institutionalized racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, came about in large part because of the widening and broadening of our understanding of inequality. That conversation was begun by Occupy.

There's a million white people better qualified than a black man to be president of America.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

I mean, we're not talking about simply racism, we're taking about white supremacy.

I think that what people have failed to talk about is white supremacy.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

There can't be reverse racism against a group that is not at a disadvantage.

In the U.S., while individual whites might be against racism, they still benefit from their group's control. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won't be one of them.

You cannot be responsible for Jim Crow. You can not be responsible for racism. This is much more a problem for the person exercising racism.You are confronted with the reality of racism when you go in the streets, when the eyes of others come upon you. [James] Baldwin goes back with you to all the experiences you went through and gives a name to them, and explains why it is like this.

If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.

The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country.

Whiteness in a racist, corporate-controlled society is like having the image of an American Express Cardstamped on one's face: immediately you are “universally accepted.”

I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism.