Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

I know 100 percent what it's like to have people tell you that you can't hold an office because of your color, and to have people vote based on that belief.

I'm guilty of reverse discrimination. I'm white, and people don't think that white fighters are any good.

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

Santa Claus was white and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I'm going to blackmail you.I said, 'Momma, why don't they call it 'whitemail'? They lie too.'

People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency.

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward. It's the hardest to be a woman.

People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things.

Either because I was an athlete or because I was black - probably both - there seemed to be a clear assumption that I wouldn't be up to the work.

Donald Trump insisted yesterday that he is not racist, because one time an African-American won Apprentice. Because nothing says 'not racist' like making a black man run your errands.

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

[To the South African parliament:] I do not know why we equate - and with the examples before us - a white skin with civilization.

He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.

Stop saying you're not racist because you have a friend that's black. That's like saying you're not a pedophile because you have a friend that's a kid.

Now, personally, I am baffled by the concept of racial prejudice. Why hate someone based on the color of their skin when, if you take the time to get to know them as a human being, you can find so many other things to hate them for?

Even though my mother had told me growing up that, 'If you win, nobody cares what color you are,' that wasn't necessarily true in the N.F.L.

My personal opinion is that you can't be racist towards white people. You can be prejudiced about them, but being prejudiced isn't an illegal act, whereas being racist can be.

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.

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

There will always be that dreadful monster prejudice to do extra battle against because of their color.

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

A smart black guy is confronting for most people. But that's on them, not on me.

Some white people are privileged, some aren't. Some black people are, some aren't. It's strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it's making a generalization - a negative one - based on skin color.