James McBride Quotes

It's a shameful piece of history and I think - I don't mean to be political or sobering or anything - but I think America, the United States, we still have to deal with the issue of our original sin, which was slavery. And I think we're seeing the ramifications, the consequences, of not really facing the truth as to what we as a nation struggled towards. You know, struggled with and are still struggling and rectifying.

African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.

The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.

The time has gone by for colored people to talk of patriotism: ... He used to be proud that his grandfather … fought for liberty in the Revolutionary War. But that time had passed by.

What's going to be a hundred years from now ain't much account to us.... The whites has the lands and the sense, an' the blacks has nothin' but their freedom, an' it's jest like a dream to them.

From last century's 'The Birth of a Nation' to this century's 'Gods and Generals,' Hollywood has likely done more than any other American institution to obstruct a truthful apprehension of the Civil War and, thus, modern America's very origins.

As a white, female, half-Jewish writer, when I read 'The Underground Railroad,' it reminded me that America isn't just the sort of Sesame Street that I grew up with that tolerated and embraced diversity in the Northeast, but in fact was built on the foundation of slavery.

The thing people have to remember is there's nothing natural about racism as it exists in America. I mean, we know this historically. We can look at 1619, when Africans first came here, and how early African slaves intermixed pretty indiscriminately with indentured white servants.

When we're talking about slavery... we're really talking about the web of relationships that exists between whites and blacks from 1619 to 1865 to now.

America says we are a great democratic society and other people should follow our example. Well, I say we benefited from slavery, and as a nation, we never faced that because the people in power chose not to.

For anyone who has ever asked why the U.S. needs to address the issue of reparations for its history of slavery, Donald Trump is why. He is the living embodiment of America's unresolved issues.

America is haunted by an apparition steeped in slavery, and I wanted to remind everyone that, 'Yo, we've got to handle this.'

I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance's White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah's Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back — and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal.

If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians.

If the white man ain't the devil, he's been aiming at the history of the Americans.

This white man who is saying "it takes time." For three hundred and more years they have had "time," and now it is time for them to listen.

I hope that young people especially will begin to have a better understanding of slavery and its effects, which are still evident today, to understand those parallels and, from there, begin ta be a part of the wave of hope to change things for the better.

I think racial justice - and addressing the sick and enduring legacy of structural racism - remains one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one that's particularly important for more and more white people to speak up about.

“America begins in black plunder and white democracy.” I appreciate the day off today to finally fully read The Case for Reparations. . . . I grew up feeling superior (hah, how white of me) because I was from New England and my part of the country didn’t have slaves, or so I’d been taught. . . . Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations. Yes, on this day.

It somehow became an article of faith on the right that Obama is the most extreme president in American history. Although, when they say that, I think what they really mean is...he's black.

I worked at an all-black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, I was involved in what the Negroes, I mean, blacks were thinking, what they were feeling.

Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.

While it has become “cool” for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white people do not feel that this pleasure should be linked to unlearning racism.

It is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government.