Desmond Tutu Quotes

I think there is a commitment on the part of the White House to racial justice in this country, and no ambiguity.

Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

The price of the liberation of the whites is the liberation of the Blacks.

Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us.

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.

[Civil right leaders]themselves in their pronouncements will tell you they need white allies, they need white help, they need white this.

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.

If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place.

I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

Accordingly, one race is neither superior nor inferior to another.

A race-transcendent politics is most likely to succeed when the white community takes responsibility for overcoming its racism, not when the black community decides to forget it.

Race must never be a partisan issue.

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.

We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.

I think that we are all deeply, deeply committed to the liberation of black people. And so, when you put people together who have and share that commitment, the sky is the limit.

For us, #BlackLivesMatter is really a re-humanization project. It's a way for us to love each other again, to love ourselves, and to project that love into the world so that we can transform it.

When we say 'Black Lives Matter,' we're not saying that any other life doesn't matter. That has never, ever been our message. Our message has always been from a place of love.

At the end of the day, if you're not against racism, you're racist.

I want all of the work that I do to have a social justice footprint attached. I want it to move the needle forward when it comes to the perception of all people, but especially people of color.