Margo Jefferson Quotes

Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.

Since anti-racist individuals did not control mass media, the media became the primary tool that would be used and is still used to convince black viewers, and everyone else, of black inferiority.

It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people.

First there was racism. Then liberals created institutional racism and coded racism. You can only hear it with a dog whistle.

African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.

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

Black people are inferior to Caucasians. Blacks constitute a totally distinct group; they overshadow the country with the germ... of evil.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That's just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

He was murdered by every member of the gospel who has remained silent about racial discrimination—who has hidden behind the stained glass windows of his church.. He was murdered by every Negro who accepted segregation.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

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.

All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life, but with the product of these conditions, the Negro himself.

White people scare the crap out of me... I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord... never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, "We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here— have a nice day

There are people out there like Fox News who, every time a Black person complains in public of how we are treated in our society, is accused of “playing the race card.”

In the post-Civil War South few whites ever voted for black office seekers, and the legacy of their refusal remains with us in a variety of forms. The depiction of Mr. Obama as a Kenyan, an Indonesian, an African tribal chief, a foreign Muslim — in other words, as a man fundamentally ineligible to be our president — is perhaps the most searing. Tellingly, it is a charge never brought against any of his predecessors.

Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that.

The diversity industry needs friction to survive, so it perpetually reworks the definition of racism.

Growing up in a predominantly white area of the predominantly white state of Wisconsin, it was, I'm sad to say, relatively easy for me to go through life without recognizing or reckoning with the obvious signs of racism.

White supremacy is a very, very popular and trenchant belief in this country's history and heritage.

The problem is that my generation was pacified into believing that racism existed only in our history books.

In the black community, Trump's history of racial discrimination is deeply embedded.

Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system.