Vernon Jordan Quotes

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.

Whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior.

Until racial justice and freedom is a reality in this land, our union will remain profoundly imperfect.... The Negro is going to get justice or this society will be ripped apart.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.

The only part of my mother's experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy.

Black lives do matter, and our lives do hold value.

It's easier, as a white person, to be silent about racial injustice. It's easier. On paper. But it's not easier on the whole, because injustice affects all of us, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Racism has two primary functions: the oppression of people of color, which most people recognize, but also the simultaneous elevation of white people. You can't hold one group down without lifting the other up.

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

All lives matter when black lives matter and no lives are more important than black lives.

I think that part of the issue here is when people hear 'Black Lives Matter,' sometimes they think that someone is saying your life doesn't matter, and that's not what 'Black Lives Matter,' at least to me, is saying.

#BlackLivesMatter has raised the bar in our national dialog: Addressing economic inequality is necessary but not sufficient. It is also necessary to directly confront racial injustice.

We need to fight for a new human rights movement that recognizes and values black life.

Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels. These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all but which are actually only consistently afforded to white people.

I'm a white male in power. In many cases, I'm the enemy.

When we address the disparities facing black people, we get a lot closer to a true democracy where all lives matter.

It is just not something we need to forget easily, to just bend the knee, to put on our t-shirts, Black Lives Matter, and one week after everyone forgets that.

We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

If any man claims the Negro should be content... let him say he would willingly change the color of his skin and go to live in the Negro section of a large city. Then and only then has he a right to such a claim.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

We believe that when you make Black America better - you make all of America better.