Kehinde Wiley Quotes

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.

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

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

Everyone who has a pair of eyes in this country understands the racial tensions and the issues we have are very serious and they're not going away. Just because we had Barack Obama as our president and, on paper, everything looks equal, it's very clearly not.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.

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.

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.

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

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.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

America is yours [Whites] today because of crime and violence.

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

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.

Nobody wants to get over the legacy of slavery more than Black people do.

The American economy, the American society, the American unconscious are all racist.

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

The scars of racism still remain deeply imbedded in America.

Slavery was gone but its inequalities remained.

Civil rights in this country is unfinished business, and racism is alive and well.

So white guilt is not a guilt of conscience; it's not something that you get up in the morning and say, my God, I feel guilty about what happened to black Americans. Rather it is the fact that in relation to black Americans you lack moral authority.

If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.

I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation.

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.