Opal Tometi Quotes

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as largely disposable.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

The reality is that anti-black racism is a global phenomenon, and it looks different in each context, but if you look at the outcomes, if you listen and look at the experiences, you will see that it's clear, and it's happening across the globe.

The reality is we have allowed systemic racism to continue through all these years.

We need to recognize that racism has never been subtle, though it has gone underreported.

The international community cannot accept that whole communities are marginalized because of the color of their skin. People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history.

We have gaps that are rooted in systemic racism.

In the West or anywhere else, the treatment of people in an undignified way (structural and institutionalized racism against Latinos or African American citizens) as well as a dangerous dehumanization of some people (in Palestine, Iraq, Africa or Asia) are simply unacceptable.

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color.

I hate to say this about the Republican establishment, but their view of Civil Rights is to tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club.

The U. S, Social Security Act not only takes the Afro-American for a ride, but aids immediately in perpetuating his inferior status, What we see here, as in most other 'liberal' legislation, in a further stratifying of the Negro at the bottom of the ladder of life. .

We don't want something for youth at risk, we want something for black youth at risk.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

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

We [Blacks] wear the mask that grins and lies It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

Apartheid is alive and well and it lives in our schools, and I'm sad to say it lives in the halls of the State legislature.

We insist that educationally and socially we maintain a segregated society …

If this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-American didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

We cannot go on, as we have gone on for more than half a century, with one great section of our population … set off from the real contribution to solving national issues because of a division of race lines …

American democracy is a failure. It is a miserable failure. It has failed because it is a limited and racial and divisible democracy …. How can we fight for democracy in Burma, a country we have not seen, when we don't have democracy in Birmingham, a city we have seen.