Andrew Young Quotes

To solve the new century's mounting social and environmental problems, people of color activist and white activists need to be able to join forces. But all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration. The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop is the most powerful tool that I have seen for removing the barriers to true partnerships between people of color and white folks. If the CWS trainings were mandatory for all white activists, the progressive movement in the United States would be unstoppable.

I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.

Well, I really think that shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.

When I care about black liberation, it is because I care about white liberation.

What's good for Blacks is good for all of America.

Few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks.

Intelligent white Southerners are ready to see Negroes as useful members of the community

The Great Society wanted to make America look like a country in which Little Rock could never have happened. It failed because it was a venture in denial rather than in realistic social transformation.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

I think in order to achieve real change, we as the black community need to come up with real asks and we have to determine, what do we actually want? We obviously want some social reform, on police brutality and things like that. We also need political changes. But it's more than voting. What are we as black people asking of these politicians?

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence.

I have never seen white people who would sit, who would, who would approach a solution to their own problems nonviolently or passively. It's only when they are so-called "fighting for the rights of Negroes" that they nonviolently, passively, and lovingly, you know, approach the situation.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy

I am disappointed that after all of the struggles that we have had in this country for such a long time, trying to get through and beyond racism and bigotry and discrimination - I think it is sad. It just tells us the kind of work that we have to do as - as America, as a nation.

The Negro loves America enough to criticize her fundamentally. Most white Americans simply can't be bothered.

What we are working for is an educational program that has become a resource and rallying point for scores of brave southerners who are leading the fight for justice and better race relations in these crucial days

Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself.

We must have an America in which White men and women can live and work, in their homes and in the streets of our cities, without fear.

One of the particular things that impressed me was one visitor [of NAACP] - I think it was - it wasn't the Prime Minister of England. We were located then on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, up several flights of rickety stairs, and he came all the way up those stairs to see Walter [White], largely because of certain kinds of impact, I think, that the Association seemingly was having.

Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing... then it will be done, but not until then.

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.

We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... when yellow will be mellow... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.

I have a hard time accepting diversity as a synonym for justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.