Roger Ross Williams Quotes

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

If you are the normal white American, truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.

If you're getting harassed, it's not helpful to know that racism has generally declined in America, when you're still experiencing it. That is a reality that we're still vulnerable to.

What whites cannot experience and may never understand is that no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in the racially divisive America.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

I know that I am a black man in a white world. . . I know that I never had it made.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

The media really only pays attention to white people. I think America is really racist.

America that is divided against itself cannot stand, and we cannot say we have all of this unity they say we have when black people are being discriminated against in every city in America I have visited.

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.

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

He wants to do you in cause the color of your skin.

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

We treat racism in this country like it's a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You've got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it's immune to and what breaks it down.

It's so hard for me to even acknowledge America without talking about race. If you look at our society, if you look at the prisons, if you look at the poverty and which side of the line the majority of people are, we have to acknowledge how we divide ourselves up, that there's racism alive in this country. And it's not in the law. It's in our minds. And that's what we have to actively battle.

The continued lynchings and other crimes against negroes, whether in New England or the South, and unspeakable political exponents of white supremacy, according to all recorded history, augur ill for America's future.

Racism is cruel and unjust. It cuts deep and lingers long in individual and community memories. And it is not a thing of the past....We all have a duty to do what we can to turn this around.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.

The man does not beat your head because you got a Cadillac or because you got a Ford; he beats you because you're black!

Although black and white Americans live, work, and learn together now, there is still injustice in America.

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.