Lee Daniels Quotes

Americans have their issues with skin colour, even within the black community, with light and dark skin; it's crazy - but no one's oblivious to it.

A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionary stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them.

I've experienced colorism in that way: where if you're lighter, then you'll potentially be accepted into society better than if you were darker-skinned.

I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.

If whiteness were of no particular advantage, then having a fuller color wheel of skin tones would be purely a matter of celebration. But whiteness - just a drop of it - does still carry privilege. You learn that very young in America.

The prejudice was so bad in the United States at that time that a dark person with a white person would not be served in a restaurant. My father, mother, and I would try it occasionally. We would sit there, and the food would never come.

'Precious' is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I'm prejudiced. I'm prejudiced against people who are darker than me.

Those days were very tough. All my teammates are white, and it was a different time. I couldn't go out to eat with the white players; I had to wait until someone brought something out to the bus. We couldn't stay in the same hotels.

In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House - who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy.

There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us ... Even when you cease to be slaves, you are far removed from being placed on an equality with the white man ... I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact

The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail…unlike is normally situated at a safe distance.

If you're white, You're all right. If you're brown, Stick around. But if you're black, Get back, get back.

The essence of racism is prejudice coupled with power ... Our primary experience is one of white privilege, even in places where whites may be a minority in the surrounding population.

The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deep seated…

Apartheid is often misunderstood. It could just as easily be understood a policy of good neighborliness.

The scars of racism still remain deeply imbedded in America.

Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority.

We have a long, ugly history of white supremacy in this country, ranging from Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans down to the 1924 Immigration Act to keep non-Europeans out.

I would be ignorant to say colorism doesn't exist; it's gross and disgusting.

Ageism is a variation of racism or sexism, all the other isms.

Segregation is not exclusion.

We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down.

In my country - even though we have a lot of dark-skinned people - people think the lighter you are, the better you are. They think beauty has to do with being light-skinned. I think that's really wrong.