Laverne Cox Quotes

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.

For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.

This is really honest: I have to remind myself not to look another black man as a threat.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

You cannot be responsible for Jim Crow. You can not be responsible for racism. This is much more a problem for the person exercising racism.You are confronted with the reality of racism when you go in the streets, when the eyes of others come upon you. [James] Baldwin goes back with you to all the experiences you went through and gives a name to them, and explains why it is like this.

Racism is kinda old. For real.

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment."

We have been basically persuaded that we should not talk about racism.

He [liberal white person] may stand with you through thin, but not thick; when the chips are down, you'll find that as fixed in him as his bone structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he's better than anybody black.

Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.

When you say black lives matter, that's inherently racist.

They don't let many black people in the governor's mansion in Alabama, unless they're cleaning.

[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

I know I am judged unfairly by my physical characteristics and ostracized because of that so I say, "Yes, I'm a black man."

Young black men are considered dangerous, expendable, threatening and part of a culture of criminality.

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that.

For their abuse of [the Black African] race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.

The real nightmare resides in a society that hides behind the mutually informing and poisonous notions of colorblindness and a post-racial society, a convenient rhetorical obfuscation that allows white Americans to ignore the institutional and individual racist ideologies, practices and policies that cripple any viable notion of justice and democracy.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

The mass criminalization of white men would disturb us to the core.

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US - from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.

Why hate someone for the color of their skin when there are much better reasons to hate them?