Nicholas Kristof Quotes

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

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

There's not a white man in this country who can say he never benefited from being white.

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.

I can't explain exactly why it lives within me for so long and passionately. But race matters to me; racial equality matters to me, as does gender. There is something about these kinds of social injustices that go to the deep of me.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

We simply cannot insist that race should not matter when everything in life argues that it does.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

Until racial justice and freedom is a reality in this land, our union will remain profoundly imperfect.... The Negro is going to get justice or this society will be ripped apart.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

He shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.

The whole issue of race and discrimination is a moral issue.

Racism exists everywhere. So when people act surprised about racism, I'm the one that's surprised.

We tend to think of racism as this interpersonal verbal or physical abuse, when in truth, that is only one way that racism manifests itself. The reality of contemporary racism is that it while it is ubiquitous, it is often invisible, subsequently making it more difficult to name and identify.

One of the most subtle but aggressive ways racism exists is through our education system.

All these police treating our people wrong, man. Black lives matter, but we got fans of all different colors, so all lives matter.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

Racial profiling has to stop.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

If you're white and you're wrong, then you're wrong; if you're black and you're wrong, you're wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green - God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.