Racial Attitudes Quotes

'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' I've used it to demonstrate racial attitudes to people who I thought needed a better understanding of all human beings. Malcolm was not a racist. He was not looking for revenge. He realized that kindness and goodness did not come from any one kind of person.

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.

So far as this particular negro is personally concerned, he may be dismissed as beneath contempt. There is a far graver side to the matter. This negro is regarded as a leader; he both reflects the sentiments of his race, and his utterance react upon his followers with an effect that was made sufficiently plain by the "vigorous applause" with which his slander was greeted by the negroes in the gallery. As the blatant mouthing of a mere negro, White's utterances are not worth notice; as a fresh manifestation of negroism, of what the negro's attitude is toward the white man, now and always, its significance should not be allowed to escape us.

Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It's hard to say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me?

I have lived among negroes, all my life, and I am for this Government with slavery under the Constitution as it is. I am for the Government of my fathers with negroes. I am for it without negroes. Before I would see this Government destroyed I would send every negro back to Africa, disintegrated and blotted out of space

I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

There are many, very many blacks who… begin to feel themselves consequential, …. will not be satisfied unless they get white women for wives, and are likewise exceedingly impertinent to white people in low circumstances…. I solemnly swear, I have seen more white women married to, and deluded through the arts of seduction by negroes in one year in Philadelphia, than for eight years I was visiting (West Indies and the Southern States)…. There are perhaps hundreds of white women thus fascinated by black men in this city, and there are thousands of black children by them at present

Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans.

The Catholic Church had strict racial attitudes and intolerance for anybody who was not Catholic. When I look at a lot of Black ministers and what went on in the Black church, I was more caught up with those who were in Cadillacs and shiny suits than I was with those who were Kingian in their style.

There is a certain percentage of the white population ... if they started having more middle-class black kids who are friends with their kids, eating Cheerios in their kitchen, their attitudes start changing.

Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.

They are a harmless race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist.

Black employers are just as negative as the white employers concerning inner-city workers.

By looking upon themselves as human beings, their whiteness to them isn't the yardstick of perfection or honor or anything else. And, therefore, this creates within them an attitude that is different from the attitude of the white that you meet here in America, and it was in Mecca that I realized that white is actually an attitude more so than it's a color.

The strange thing about my life is that I came to America at about the time when racial attitudes were changing. This was a big help to me. Also, the people who were most cruel to me when I first came to America were black Americans. They made absolute fun of the way I talked, the way I dressed. I couldn't dance. The people who were most kind and loving to me were white people. So what can one make of that? Perhaps it was a coincidence that all the people who found me strange were black and all the people who didn't were white.

People listen to what their political leaders are telling them, and my view is both that Trump is tapping into some racially ugly attitudes, but also that he is leading people to racially ugly attitudes.

Depressions, local and larger strikes, boom times, wars, repressions, all impact a life as do epidemics such as AIDS and pollution that may take years off a person's life. We all, whether we like it or not and whether we acknowledge it or not, are impacted by the racial attitudes we carry within us, and experience in some form every time we turn on the television, the radio, go to a movie, read a magazine or a newspaper, or walk down the street.

As a race, the Negroes are not lazy.

The United States, the Dominions and the British ruling classes are alike race-conscious, and the underlying instinct of the Anglo-Saxons is to preserve the Anglo-Saxon breed intact against the rising tide of color. Despite emotional appeals and jingo talk, the common British and American attitude towards the people of other colors is a fundamental factor in the present situation

I still think people do have racial hang-ups, but I think one of the reasons I can joke about it is people are shedding those racial hatreds.

I'm really interested in how non-American countries process race.

In the common esteem, not only are the only good aboriginals dead ones, but all aboriginals are either sacred or contemptible according to the length of time they have been dead.

I was raised to believe that you had to do things better than white people in order to succeed. The old black shows were better than the white shows. "The Jeffersons" (1975) was a lot better. "Good Times" (1974) was way funnier. "Sanford and Son" (1972). Now, though, everyone thinks we're equal, so we submit the same shit that everyone else submits. And then we get mad when they won't air it. You got to go back to the old attitude of it has to be twice as good.

My kids are nothing like I remember black kids being when I was a kid.