Patrisse Cullors Quotes

It doesn't even feel like racism is real. It just feels like the weirdest ploy, like we're just being had on so many levels. It's even kind of funny when you think about it. A reason not to like someone is 'because you're black.' C'mon, man. How dumb is that?

As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.'

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

'I Spy' represents the absence of the tension of the black man or black woman or anyone of that color walking in, so that the white racist person can become entertaining to a viewer.

Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.

Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans.

As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like.

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

The American economy, the American society, the American unconscious are all racist.

Barack Obama is an educated fool. He is viewed as the white man in blackface in the community.

Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world. Black children today are hammered with the idea of racial identity and pride, yet racial pride in whites constitutes a grave evil.

The thing people have to remember is there's nothing natural about racism as it exists in America. I mean, we know this historically. We can look at 1619, when Africans first came here, and how early African slaves intermixed pretty indiscriminately with indentured white servants.

I'm a black man in the United States, and there's no two ways about that. I have a shared common experience with other black men, and through that, there's an automatic understanding.

It's unfortunate that myself, as a black man, cannot care about the issues that impact the black community without being seeing as a race-baiter or without being seen as someone who doesn't care about any other ethnic groups.

I was told I wasn't black enough for certain jobs because of the way I speak and carry myself and because I was raised in Europe. It's why I left L.A.

As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral.

When people talked about O.J. Simpson being race-neutral, that was a race card. It just meant we don't think of him as black. But race-neutral is just like flesh-tone Band-aids. It's not neutral; it's white.

Black lives are too easy to take in America because we don't want to question why people are so afraid of black and brown people to begin with. And that's what I want 'Strong Island' to do.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

Race has no genetic or scientific basis.

Black reporters are as capable of racism as anyone else.

People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage.

America in its entirety is segregationist and is racist. It's more camouflaged in the north, but it's the same thing.

I'm a black man in America, so I'm going to be misunderstood.