Bill Shorten Quotes

Our criminal justice system affirmatively depends on inequality.

Blacks - and critically. black elites - remain skeptical of the procedural fairness of the criminal justice system, while white elites, Democrats and Republicans alike, are more willing to embrace a “law and order” approach to criminal law enforcement.

The color of my skin should not determine whether I live or die.

America should be ashamed to say they have the best justice system in the world when, every day, race plays a part in who goes to prison, who don't go to prison.

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.

We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.

I learned a lot about evasiveness, and how racists could use a system to forestall equality. I also learned a lot riding those dusty roads and walking into those sullen hostile courts in Jackson, Mississippi. It just seems that unless something's pushed, unless you litigate, nothing happens.

Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.

When we address the disparities facing black people, we get a lot closer to a true democracy where all lives matter.

Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

We have to face up to systemic racism. We see it in jobs, we see it in education, we see it in housing. But let's be really clear; it's a big part of what we're facing in the criminal justice system.

We've got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.

The only difference between me and those other great Yankees is my skin color.

However, while we should certainly celebrate the demise of overt official racism, we must also critically examine where we are at this historical moment, recognize the many challenges ahead and reaffirm our commitment to making Brown v. Board a reality.

Racial profiling has to stop.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.

Many are observing Ferguson and witnessing the anger, demonstrations, looting and vandalism and calling for quiet. But quiet isn't enough. The absence of noise isn't the presence of justice - and we must demand justice in Ferguson and the other 'Fergusons' around America.

I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it.

And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation.

When Thurgood Marshall became a lawyer, race relations in the United States were particularly bad.

That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive that kind of sentence he did, which was to go to prison on the weekends; I think he lectured there-an outside lecturer.

Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white - you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.