Bell Hooks Quotes

I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

The technologist was the final guise of the white missionary, industrialization the last gospel of a dying race and living standards a substitute for a purpose in living.

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the Whites) do...by advocating the purity of all races.

People keep telling me about the white race and the black race - and it really doesn't make sense. I played Miami, met a fellow two shades darker than me - and his name was Ginsberg! Took my place in two sit-in demonstrations - nobody knew the difference. The he tried for a third lunch counter and blew the whole bit ... asked for blintzes.

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race.

My children don't look Hispanic.

The tan Everyman will be a multi-ethnic being, who will carry genes from all races of man and who, as a result of these different genes, feel no loyalty to any race. The birth of the Tan Everyman is the death of white people. The Tan Everyman beings the genocide of white people.

This problem, which exists because of the presence of … Negroes in this country, can be permanently solved only by the physical separation of the races or by resigning ourselves to total mongrelization resulting in the destruction of both the white and black races

A race is genetically coherent, a race is something you can study, a race is about genes and DNA, but it’s not just about genes and DNA. The most important thing about it is the people and the spirit. That’s what a race is about.

I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in. I didn't identify with black culture. Like, I didn't like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn't into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.

I was raised in Nigeria, and my mother is white, but I never saw her as white, not until I came to America. She was just my mother. She didn't really have a color.

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

I was raised in a completely black world. In those days, if a white woman married a black man, she lived as a black woman, and that was just the end of it. So, I don't have a feeling of being bi-racial. I don't have a connection to it. People often come up to me thinking I do have a connection to it, and I kind of let them down because I really don't.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is ... a normal and healthy sentiment.

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

"Native" always means people who belong someplace else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere, because they think of everybody else as native.

Each time I visit Japan, I am reminded of how Canadian I am and how little racial connection matters.

I think the basic culture of this country is European and Christian and I think that if we lose that, we lost America...I don't think we should suppress other races, but I think if we lose that White - what's the word for it - that White dominance in America, with it we lose America.

If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa

If we just keep sleeping together we'll just be one race and it won't be a problem.

You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries.

I'm proud to be white. I don't have anything against my color. But I don't think color matters, either. Just like I feel it doesn't matter that I'm a white dude doin' black music.