Sonny Rollins Quotes

I have the utmost respect and 'aloha' for black people - who have already suffered so much due to racial discrimination and acts of hatred.

I don't understand racism. I have many black friends and many others have been my opponents. Respect is basic. Unfortunately racism is a social problem, and football belongs to society.

This case is just as racist as the fictional, but unfortunately all too typical case, in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

I don't think the white establishment will ever respect or appreciate a black man who speaks the truth.

There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.

If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

Racism. It's ugly. Even in tubers.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

Denying racism is the new racism.

There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

It's almost impossible to separate the actions, or it's also, it's almost impossible to separate the oppression and exploitation, criminal oppression and criminal exploitation of the American negro from the color of the skin of the person who is the oppressor or the exploiter.

Racism does not diminish with brains, it's a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn't necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom!

Had it not been for the race problem early thrust upon me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the established social order and of the economic development into which I was born.

Murder and lying comes easy for white people.

If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned.

I don't wanna believe that racism exists, but the more I wish it away, the more I realize it's in our system.

America's racist, so what do you expect.

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.

Racial inequality is a big problem.

Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.

I'm glad Hurricane Katrina happened. It taught us an important lesson: black people can't swim.

Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority.

Today the governments of Latin America should be ashamed of not havingexterminated the indigenous, at the end of the twentieth century, because weexist at the end of this century. We are not myths of the past, ruins in thejungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims ofintolerance and racism.

Ralph Bunche, who is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat, can't stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic, or professional level of a negro is, collectively he stands condemned.

They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.