Al Sharpton Quotes

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.

The American economy, the American society, the American unconscious are all racist.

The extraordinary nature of individual black achievement in formerly white domain certainly does suggest that the old Jim Crow is dead, but it doesn't necessarily mean the end of racial caste - if history is any guide, it may have just taken a different form.

If you read some of the recent literature, there is no such thing as whiteness. But we made it up. Not my original thought, but it's true. Because you were born white, you have advantages systemically, culturally, psychology there. They have been built up for hundreds of years. Many people can't look at it.

Everyone who has a pair of eyes in this country understands the racial tensions and the issues we have are very serious and they're not going away. Just because we had Barack Obama as our president and, on paper, everything looks equal, it's very clearly not.

So people thought once Obama got into office that racism was over with. But, what we ended up learning was that it just came more into the light.

Black people cannot look to government to solve their problems.

The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status.

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library.

Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans.

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.

Sadly, whites are rarely open to what black and brown folks have to say regarding their ongoing experiences with racist mistreatment. And we are especially reluctant to discuss what that mistreatment means for us as whites: namely that we end up with more and better opportunities as the flipside of discrimination.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

There's not a white man in this country who can say he never benefited from being white.

Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes

I have been refused entrance on the buses because I would not pay my fare at the front and go around to the rear door to enter. That was the custom if the bus was crowded up to the point where the white passengers would start occupying.

I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation.

Never did I think I would live to see the day Jim Crow was resurrected, making repeat appearances in the South. And he has packed his bags, and he has moved North. Something is wrong.

I believe if I was white I would've been England captain for more than 10 years.

We've come a long way from the days of Jim Crow, and yes, we elected a black president, but racism lives.

So many white people don't want to talk about race; it's uncomfortable. Many reason that slavery happened more than a century ago, and people alive today had nothing to do with it. But the particulars of these stories, from slavery to segregation to civil rights and mass incarceration, are at the marrow of life in America today.

I can tell you as a black person in South Carolina whose grandparents grew up through Jim Crow, when you lose the courts and justice no longer becomes just, we're in a world of trouble.

#BlackLivesMatter has raised the bar in our national dialog: Addressing economic inequality is necessary but not sufficient. It is also necessary to directly confront racial injustice.

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.