Shelby Steele Quotes

I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.

I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.

I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons.

I started a lecture series that was inspired by my reporting on race in America. The 'Black in America' series launched on CNN in 2007 as an opportunity to freshen the national conversation on race.

Because of unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, [freed slaves] never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country.

Although the race problem may seem to lie dormant at times, it continually exists, lives on and on and sometimes rages with all the fury of a jungle beast. It gnaws at the very vitals of our existence, in time it will sap our strength and destroy the greatness of our American way of life unless solved properly and permanently.

Everyone is very aware that, not only do we have a race problem, but it's so pervasive that it affects national and global politics on a scale that I don't think a lot of people imagined.

We're not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.

As a black man, I actually had naturally sort of comedic curiosity about the Klan.

The problem of racial difference in America - and in modern life more broadly - is always presented as an economic, political, biological or cultural problem. But I want to say that it's at least as much a philosophical and imaginative disaster.

I definitely feel like, in America, even though race is a social construct... there's still a line drawn in the sand; there still are sides. Politically, there's a black side and a white side, and I stand unapologetically on the black side.

Race is the San Andreas Fault of our culture as well as our history. Its fissures are forever present and not that far beneath the surface of every day life. To deny that is to risk being labeled delusional.

The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.

I would think black people think everything is about race. They are the ones who are on the outside of the game. They are the ones who face it every day.

Black Lives Matter is the culmination of racial divide. They're nothing more than the last socially acceptable hate group in America.

I've experienced racism and run-ins with the law, and it's a real thing, and it happens where I grew up. It's something that not a lot of people want to talk about. I feel like I have a duty, and I wouldn't be honest or true to myself if I didn't speak about it.

Racism is a disease. Go to your doctor with an ailment, and let the doctor tell you, 'Well, look, I'm not going to treat you; we're just not going to talk about it. It's going to go away.' You would look at him like he's crazy. By not talking about racism, it's not going to go away.

No one actually cares about blackface.

I'm still black in the eyes of America.

The NAACP ignores the wellspring of racism from within its own ranks, daring to brand anyone who disagrees with the standard they bear for the plantation-politics Democrats as 'white nationalists.'

The mantra for the Obama campaign and their surrogates has focused on one thing regarding race, which is to take every opportunity to depict the Republican Party a group of rich white racists.

Black and white is so familiar. It's how we see the printed word in books, so it's kind of neutral in a way. Yet it's ironic that black and white is so charged socially, what with its association with race.

Not unlike our country's history, my personal history was founded upon an unfortunate history of racial conflict between black and white.

There's a feeling among white Americans that there's no such thing as racial harmony, no such thing as a positive, productive relationship with people of color.

I'm a multi-racial person - I'm black and white - and growing up in North Carolina, I've dealt with a lot of racism. Growing up as a kid, I've seen it. I've been through it in many forms and fashions.