Burgess Owens Quotes

Marxism, communism, socialism - the ideologies - did not have the automatic answers to the problem of the relations between the lighter and darker races of mankind. They did not even have an answer to anti-Semitism.

As important as the presidency is, that's not the only thing to take a look at in determining the racial health of the United States.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

I've never tried to run away from my race. I was born a black man. You know that in your bones as soon as you are able to understand this country... My approach to life about race is, I don't see the difference between black people and white people.

And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

I believe there are certainly racial problems in this country, and I believe that peaceful solutions can help bring the races together.

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...

A race-transcendent politics is most likely to succeed when the white community takes responsibility for overcoming its racism, not when the black community decides to forget it.

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

Race must never be a partisan issue.

Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites …

It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.

I believe race is too heavy a burden to carry into the 21st century. It's time to lay it down. We all came here in different ships, but now we're all in the same boat.

Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.

Solve the race problem here, and once you solve the race problem here, you don't have to send these billions of dollars abroad.

I know that so many of us hoped that, by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.

If a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy. And what America is trying to do is pass laws to force whites to pretend that they want Negroes into their schools or into - in their places of employment.

White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

I am a Muslim and . . . my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings, but especially the Afro-American human being, because my religion is a natural religion, and the first law of nature is self-preservation.

Well, I really think that shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.

I think "post-racial" is a dangerous trap. You can fall into complacency and give your complicity a much more dangerous character.

Racial problems can't be easily reconciled with a pat account about racism and discrimination that lets us sort of relax into saying when we finally get this right, when we get rid of racism, when we reach the post-racial society, everything is going to be okay. Well, no, because along the way here, as we've not yet been in this racial nirvana, facts on the ground have been created.

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.