George Packer Quotes

Growing up, at that time, I didn't want to be black because I was bullied, and I'd tell my mum that I wanted to be white like everyone else at school.

Paradoxically, just at the point when racist attitudes were declining in society and many ethnic groups were integrating successfully, our political leaders became obsessed with racism.

It's bizarre: I've tried to understand why people are into Trump. I really don't think I can. I don't think it's as simple as just racism. I do think there's a fear that white people have, even if they don't have a vicious desire to do harm to black people, they fear losing their top spot.

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.

I remember when I was a kid being called names, including the 'n' word. The first time that happened, it really bothered me. But most of the people I dealt with were all white. Most of my close friends were white.

I was in Toronto when they had a severe outbreak of SARS - you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome. I was in the airport and there were these big snowboarder guys and they had white masks around their necks, and as soon as they saw me, they put their masks on. So I went "cough, cough, cough... You wanna egg rorr?

I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

That's not an accident that Donald Trump didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.

As a child growing up in San Francisco in the 1950s, I sometimes met insults when I ventured outside of Chinatown or my neighborhood. I have even been spat on and threatened with a knife. I could have let my anger fester until it became hate. However, I realized they were isolated incidents, and I simply got on with my life.

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it's coming from.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.

I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'

I never though much about race.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.

You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.

Myself, I happen to be married to an African-American woman, and we're together 17 years. We took a few trips to the South 15 years ago, and we were sobered by some of the reactions people had - how subtle or not-so-subtle their reactions were.

There's a lot more hypocrisy than before. Racism has gone back underground.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

I sometimes feel that racism is getting worse.

I'm Armenian, but I'm very fair and I look white... I would always get such hate about it.

When I was growing up, I never heard the word 'racism.' It was only in Paris I encountered that.

Yeah, race exists. Racism is still here, and it's doing well. Turn on the news. I don't think me and my comedy can really change that.

Racism is essentially natural, it's old fashioned it's an evolutionary phase that we're going through. Ultimately it wont exist.

I remember people saying: 'You look funny, your hair is so black, you have a flat nose,' but I didn't think of it being racism, and I still don't. But there was a sense of difference, of being an outsider.