Toni Morrison Quotes

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

I never though much about race.

Race is everything.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.

Kids know nothing about racism. They're taught that by adults.

Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.... National pride has no need of the delirium of race.

All is race - there is no other truth.

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

I believe that we have to be so race-conscious in this day and age.

I don't believe in blanket statements on race.

Of course, it's fun to play with Blacks.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

Race has no place in American life or law.

Racial discourses and theories are socially constructed ... but repudiating race theory does not make it disappear in politics. Race matters ... because it functions as a marker and an anchor to establish and repudiate identity, status and position ... Races exist because racism exists.

Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American

I think some people feel that if you question the reality of race, you're questioning racism; you're saying racism isn't real. Racism is real because people actually believe race is real. We'd have to really let go of the 500-year-old idea of race as a worldview in order to undo racism.

You cannot look at a person and judge him or her by the color of their skin.

I write a lot about race precisely because I don't believe it's real.