Ishmael Reed Quotes

All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life, but with the product of these conditions, the Negro himself.

Blacks essentially play the race card, when necessary as a counter to white privilege.

He was murdered by every member of the gospel who has remained silent about racial discrimination—who has hidden behind the stained glass windows of his church.. He was murdered by every Negro who accepted segregation.

Whites don’t like to see the nigger with too much … White people was afraid that money will make the nigger act like his own man.

I have to always worry about my credibility in the black community, realizing that as a black columnist working for a white-owned newspaper, I can easily be dismissed as "the white man's tool.

Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.

The black community sees itself as one group, and they are all experiencing the same experiences as a group with racism and whatnot, growing up in this country.

I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.

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.

It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they're looting, if you see a white family it says they're looking for food.

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

When you educate a negro, you educate a candidate for the penitentiary or spoil a good field hand.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored—it is a shadow over all of us.

The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience

White people scare the crap out of me... I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord... never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, "We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here— have a nice day

Color had been made the mark of enslavement and was taken to be also the mark of inferiority; for prejudice does not reason, or it would not be prejudice

It worked for a long time. Each "stood" by the other. When the poor white lynched a Negro, the rich white protected him in court; the preacher protected him in church; the policeman looked away, the sheriff was easily intimidated, the juries rarely convicted, and the newspapers were "reasonable.

I found everywhere now the most direct antagonism between the two classes. The whites charge generally that the negro is idle, and at the bottom of all local disturbances, and credit him with most of the vices and very few of the virtues of humanity. The negroes charge that the whites are revengeful, and intend to cheat the laboring class at every opportunity, and credit them with neither good purposes nor kindly hearts..

There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.

It’s time we faced facts. Southern people just don’t like Black people.

The Problem We All Live With

The scars of racism still remain deeply imbedded in America.

Modern technical civilization does not seem to be as well handled by the black man as by the white man in the United States