Richard Cohen Quotes

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

Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

With George Bush's policies, I could make an argument for how they affect black people in a negative way. You know what I mean? But I wouldn't argue that he's a white supremacist.

If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed.

If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.

I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.

I fully understand that the African-American community has suffered from discrimination and that there are many wrongs that must still be made right.

I think that what people have failed to talk about is white supremacy.

Race is still real and you got to recognize it.

The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them.

I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate.

Race in America is not a problem you can go over, or around or under. You've got to go through it.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

To believe that the United States is post-racial requires an almost incomprehensible inability or unwillingness to stare truth in the face.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored—it is a shadow over all of us.

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

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

We've done a very poor job at really reflecting on our legacy of racial inequality... You see it in the South, but it's everywhere.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

I think some people feel that if you question the reality of race, you're questioning racism; you're saying racism isn't real. Racism is real because people actually believe race is real. We'd have to really let go of the 500-year-old idea of race as a worldview in order to undo racism.

I wanted to remind myself and others of the old Jim Crow, so that we can remind ourselves that we're still living in the new Jim Crow. I feel it's important to dress in the fashion of the times.

America is decidedly not 'post-racial.'

If you're into social justice it's hard not to be on black people's side.