Alicia Garza Quotes

I wanted people to begin dialogue about racism, about colorism. I wanted people to really become honest about our beliefs, about racism and how it exists in America today.

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.

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

I've seen and always been extremely aware of racism... casual racism, serious racism... all of that.

The biggest thing is we need to stop acting like racism don't exist.

For generations, black children have been brought up to have a critical race consciousness, a framework for dealing with prejudice and discrimination, which helps inoculate them against the spiritual toxins they will almost certainly encounter as they come of age in our society.

All racism is wrong, and denying that it exists does not make it go away.

The only difference between me and those other great Yankees is my skin color.

The truth is, no, we don't live in a post-racial state anywhere in America, and this is particularly true in Hollywood.

If whiteness were of no particular advantage, then having a fuller color wheel of skin tones would be purely a matter of celebration. But whiteness - just a drop of it - does still carry privilege. You learn that very young in America.

If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.

I know I'm breaking a taboo by using the term antiwhite racism, but I do so intentionally, because it's the reality some of our fellow citizens live with, and remaining quiet about it only aggravates their trauma.

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

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.

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they're built upon racism.

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.

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

The diversity industry needs friction to survive, so it perpetually reworks the definition of racism.

The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

Racism exists everywhere. So when people act surprised about racism, I'm the one that's surprised.

Having a strong race lens means you understand racism is threaded through and institutionalized in all of our systems and our very perceptions, threaded through how someone looks at you, treats you, thinks about you and your potential.

As long as white people put people of color, African Americans and Latinos, in the same dispensable bag, and look at our children of color as insignificant and treat women of color as not as deserving of protection as white women, we will never achieve true equality.

I don't believe in reverse racism. I really don't.

The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how.