Rhiannon Giddens Quotes

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth - and that's a myth.

Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education.

We simply cannot insist that race should not matter when everything in life argues that it does.

All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life, but with the product of these conditions, the Negro himself.

The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience

I had to go to England to really learn about American racism in a way that corroborated my reality. That was critical.

There are not grades of racism. There's racism.

While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

I don't think many people understand what racism is. The intellectuals use it like toilet paper; it's something they can use. It's not something they live.

Racists are irrational and illogical in their attempts to justify their prejudices.

I am angry about the world's conditions for black people.

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.

Racism is not dead. Definitely, there are these biases.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

Can anything good come of a backward way of thinking like judging someone based on skin color? No way.

The black community sees itself as one group, and they are all experiencing the same experiences as a group with racism and whatnot, growing up in this country.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

Barack Obama happens to be the first African-American, and so criticism of him is and always was gonna be racism, and therefore not permitted.

White supremacy is not just a social arrangement: it is a race-based faith.

Black people must address itself to the causes of poverty. That's oppression in this country.

The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.

As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.