Lexi Underwood Quotes

I think we've become blind in this country to the ways in which we've managed to reinvent a caste-like system here in the United States, one that functions in a manner that is as oppressive, in many respects, as the one that existed in South Africa under apartheid and that existed under Jim Crow here in the United States.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

Ours has not been a racially democratic society for 300 years.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.

We're not a racist organization, because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capitalism, and we know that racism is just - it's a byproduct of capitalism.

In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.

Of course there's racism in this country, and we have a terrible history of that in this nation.

Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

Of course I've felt racism.

Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot.

We definitely experience racism in England and different levels of oppression as well. Anywhere affected by colonialism there's certain kinds of race relations and class relations going on.

The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there.

As a person of color, you're in a PhD level racism class, every day. Every day, I'm in a deep racism seminar. And I'm not saying that white people aren't taking that class, but they don't show up that often and they're auditing it.

I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

However, while we should certainly celebrate the demise of overt official racism, we must also critically examine where we are at this historical moment, recognize the many challenges ahead and reaffirm our commitment to making Brown v. Board a reality.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

I'm not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting, but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered it more of a manifestation of humanity's problem rather than my personal problem.

I will never regret not denouncing apartheid.