Keith Ellison Quotes

I definitely am not white.

Race, to me, is a very blurry thing.

We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.

No one tells every white person in this country how to be. No one tells every Hispanic, or Asian or Jewish person in this country how to be. There is no single definition of whiteness or single definition of blackness.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

Well who's black and what is a black person?

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race.

Sometimes I read that I'm not 100 per cent Chinese, because I don't look all that Chinese. That's a strange one - I am Chinese.

Many black people I know are proud of the Irish part of their heritage - an Irish grandparent, say - but they recognise that many people believe in a form of racial purity. And it is from that belief that prejudice starts.

My children don't look Hispanic.

You can't get much whiter than me.

There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.

I am definitely a person of color.

The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.

I don't look like a white woman. I look Somali.

Race is everything.

The only thing Oriental about me, is my face.

Racial discourses and theories are socially constructed ... but repudiating race theory does not make it disappear in politics. Race matters ... because it functions as a marker and an anchor to establish and repudiate identity, status and position ... Races exist because racism exists.

The concept of “the white community” is a monolithic concept that I do not accept.

A race is genetically coherent, a race is something you can study, a race is about genes and DNA, but it’s not just about genes and DNA. The most important thing about it is the people and the spirit. That’s what a race is about.

White Americans can go a long time without ever thinking about the color of their skin. Black and brown Americans have no choice but to confront issues of race every day.

The most glaring aspect of white privilege is that when someone is described neutrally - without indicating color or ethnicity - more often than not, people will assume that the person is white. That assumption indicates an uncomfortable truth: in our society, whiteness determines humanity.