James Baldwin Quotes

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.

If all we are for is black people and white people who like black people, then I have nothing to say to Trump who is only for white people and black people who like him.

Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

There is a terrific apprehension among some people that blacks will take over the sport... It will create problems because their behavior, speech and dress is just a completely different culture.

White people have always shown their superiority over blacks with their feet, moving out of black neighborhoods with the fear that their kids will turn into one of them. And now, through the magic of MTV, damned if it didn't turn out that way!

I don't sign for white people.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

if you hated white people, they would just hate you back, and nothing would change in the world; and if you didn't hate them after the way they treated you, you would end up hating yourself, and nothing would change that way, either. So it was no good to hate them, and it was no good not to hate them. So nothing changed.

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.

Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites -- rather than fighting for jobs or education -- fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.

All is race - there is no other truth.

White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn't brought up to hate. But hate isn't the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness - that primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.

I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love.

This problem, which exists because of the presence of … Negroes in this country, can be permanently solved only by the physical separation of the races or by resigning ourselves to total mongrelization resulting in the destruction of both the white and black races

You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you're never going to make everybody happy.

If you took away the color of Barack Obama's skin, nobody right now would be paying him any attention.

With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.

I always wanted to eat with a Negro,” Grandma said. Yeah, well I always wanted to eat with a boney- assed old white woman,” Lula said. “So I guess this works out good.

It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.

There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution

I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

I have never felt the pain of not being white the way I've felt it since I've been a public figure/part of this entertainment industry.

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.