Chris Rock Quotes

People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

The most glaring aspect of white privilege is that when someone is described neutrally - without indicating color or ethnicity - more often than not, people will assume that the person is white. That assumption indicates an uncomfortable truth: in our society, whiteness determines humanity.

While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.

I warn young people that I interact with about this - you get into unrealistic expectations where you think that, "Oh, we're gonna eliminate racism like that. After Obama's elected how could there be any racism?".

We are still conditioning people in this country and, indeed, all over the globe to the myth of white superiority. We are constantly being told that we don't have racism in this country anymore, but most of the people who are saying that are white. White people think it isn't happening because it isn't happening to them.

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

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

The media really only pays attention to white people. I think America is really racist.

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it. We would have been failures if had to do the same things we did.

It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

We live in a racist world. Everywhere there is racism. We say to White people, "You really have to examine how you behave in the world. You are responsible for deconstructing internalized racism and being part of a ongoing process of decolonizing yourself.

Well, the white race in America is the same way. As individuals it is impossible for them to escape the collective crime committed against the Negroes in this country, collectively.

Racism is cruel and unjust. It cuts deep and lingers long in individual and community memories. And it is not a thing of the past....We all have a duty to do what we can to turn this around.

So the mayor of New Orleans would have used his own buses had the people had been white?

Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir.

Whites would rather not be involved in race matters, I think.

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

In short, and let us be clear on it: race is not a card. It determines whom the dealer is, and who gets dealt.

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

I don't think that the country is ever ready to have the conversation about race.

Whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior.