Ibram X. Kendi Quotes

The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

All white people in the United States have benefited from a white supremacy. But does that mean that a white person should be viewed badly because they turn against a white supremacist policy? Just because you've benefited from something shouldn't disable you from repudiating it.

The doublespeak of the American neoconservatives who conjured up the term "reverse racism" (was) to attack those who fought against White supremacy. This so-called ‘colorblind’ ideology has reversed the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and is actually commonsense among White Americans. It informs policymakers from the White House to the Supreme Court and has been used to justify the retreat from egalitarianism.

The FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremburg Laws.

This country does belong to white people. America was, until this last generation, a white country.

The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos or whatever in each school… What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist! Who the hell do we think we are, that the only way a black man or woman can learn is if they rub shoulders with my white child?

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

You are, in fact, stigmatized as a racist, because, after all, you have know acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for four centuries. And, now, since the '60s, white Americans have been grappling with the stigma, trying prove that they are not racist, to prove the negative.

We cannot just be nonracist. We really do need to be antiracist.

When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.

If you're looking at the people who head the institutions, there are very few African Americans or people of colour. I'm talking about the major theatres that position themselves as serving all audiences. What you find is, by and large, people who are shaping what we see, and the people who are the tastemakers are white.

The misperception about the South is that everybody is racist, and all black people are victims, that what was prevalent in the '60s is only relegated to the South.

White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage.

Restoring the rights of individuals who have served their time and reentered society is the right thing to do. Virginia's felon disenfranchisement policy is rooted in a tragic history of voter suppression and marginalization of minorities, and it needs to be overturned.

Hollywood's racist.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

Our sport has always had somewhat of a racist label to it.

We need a more substantive conversation around race relations and the way people of color are treated.

At the end of the day, if you're not against racism, you're racist.

Many of us believed that Black Lives Matter would move this country to not only reckon with white racism but to usher in new laws and practices that would curb vigilantism and law enforcement violence. But, instead, white nationalism was nurtured and began to take root among the American people.

If you're into social justice it's hard not to be on black people's side.

We continue to confront racism from our past and our present, which is why we must hold everyone, from the highest offices to our own families, accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is - wrong.

There are lots of statements that have been made and haven't led to change and reform. For me, the broader discussion around racism - education is key.

Just having people saying no to racism on a commercial changes nothing.

I'll stop talking about race when people stop being racist.