David Shields Quotes

The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.

It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.

This nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.

The race question in America has often been about race, but it has equally often been about power.

I wanted to remind myself and others of the old Jim Crow, so that we can remind ourselves that we're still living in the new Jim Crow. I feel it's important to dress in the fashion of the times.

The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater.

I do not claim to be an expert on race in America.

When we address the disparities facing black people, we get a lot closer to a true democracy where all lives matter.

I think America has always been polarized... It's a racist country and it has always been.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.

Sometimes I wonder if I got lulled into not wanting things because I grew up black in this country.

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

When I was working my way up, it seemed to me that only Westerns and 'Star Treks' or sci-fi movies could afford to get away with presenting the problems - like prejudice and desegregation, for instance - that we face in our everyday lives.

We do have a problem in this country. You can either make a movie and ignore that, or you can acknowledge it and say, this is the water that we're living in. You know this - the movie lives in this - it's centered around this particular problem, and I chose to acknowledge it.

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.

I feel that racial profiling may be a very complicated and long-standing problem. It will take a long time even to make tiny progress.

I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.

It's more dangerous to be black in America...If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk in a way that you have to be corrected.

If we [Blacks] always do what we’ve always done, then we will always get what we’ve always got.

Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes

There is no such thing as talking about class without there being implications of the racial history of the United States. You just can't do it.