Jesse Jackson Quotes

Relations between black and white would be greatly improved if we were more accepting of our fears and our feelings and more vocal about it.

I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.

We need to take responsibility and educate people. That's why black folks don't like me. I always say it's our responsibility to make safe neighborhoods. It's our job to get them cleaned up.

I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act.

Humor helps ease the tension of race and the differences in society. If there wasn't comedy I don't know if Obama could have ever become president.

People look to 'Dear White People' as an encyclopedia of our culture. But it's also art, and there are characters with different perspectives.

It may be a task that's so Herculean, but I think it's a worthy goal to try to open up America to individuals who just so happen to have a different skin color, that they have every right and every freedom to think what they want to think.

Growing up, I learned the value of sticking up for my brown-skinned friends amongst my white-skinned friends.

I felt Helen Willis was in tune with the situation of a black woman married to a white man, and she had no problem being black.

It's a totally different spiel when I talk at Morehouse. But when I'm talking at MIT? At the University of Cincinnati? I'm telling white people, in order to stop systemic racism, you must first befriend, become a colleague of, get to know intimately, put yourself culturally in the framework of someone who doesn't look like you.

In England, you feel like a member of the revolutionary guard the minute you even mention race. But I do think that the OscarsSoWhite phenomenon will have to reflect back on England. What people are essentially saying is that they want to see more diverse stories. It's not about putting three black people in the back of the shot.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I would argue further that Barack Obama's election to the presidency of the United States was essentially an American sophistication, a national exercise in seeing what was not there and a refusal to see what was there - all to escape the stigma not of stupidity but of racism.

We're not separate races. There's only one human race.

Our focus on melanin and people's skins - can't we talk about the diversity of ideology? Can't we look at people for their minds and what they can contribute? And I'd like to see us go more toward a respect for people's ability to contribute, and I actually want to get to a society where we disregard race.

I live in Brooklyn, and there's so many interracial couples in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, you don't talk about race like that.

'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' I've used it to demonstrate racial attitudes to people who I thought needed a better understanding of all human beings. Malcolm was not a racist. He was not looking for revenge. He realized that kindness and goodness did not come from any one kind of person.

I don't think it should matter to the American people what color skin is on their president. What should matter is the content of their character.

Making a movie with people of all different ethnicity, all different skin color and different backgrounds, meant that the movie can literally play all around the world. It's not just a blanket whitewash film like most Hollywood films tend to be.

I still enjoy a lot of support from the black community.

Baseball and its teams are proud of the sport's long-standing role as a change agent in American culture and society.

My color's not a crutch. See, funny crosses a lot of color barriers.

I think it's certainly important that we don't have symbols in our society that are offensive to a segment and that arouse racial division.

The area where I grew up in Birmingham was very diverse - I was aware of my race but not overly aware of it - and there seemed to be an understanding that we were all very much in the same boat.

I'm proud to be biracial, and there's a lot of people that say things like, 'I don't see color,' and I completely understand that, but I think different is beautiful, but I think our difference shouldn't separate us, and for me in this era, in this time, in everything that we're going through, my whole thing is just about unity, man.