Unconscious Racism Quotes

We never discuss race until something bad happens.

Racism is like high blood pressure—the person who has it doesn’t know he has it until he drops over with a God damned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you’re a racist than you are.

White people are very good at acting like they're not racist. They deserve an Academy Award for that.

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.

We always talk about how, obviously, there is still very in-your-face aggressive racism. But there's a lot of passive racism that, in the moment, you don't even realize is racist. You chalk it up as a strange interaction you had, and then you look at the context of it later on and realize the root of it was racism.

Black reporters are as capable of racism as anyone else.

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

I think the truth is, we are all racist, really, when it comes down to it. I think all of us have to check ourselves from time to time, and say, 'Look, that sort of attitude isn't good enough.' It takes discipline to keep our prejudices out.

I heard about the book and I said, 'Oh my god, I've got to read this book,' and I didn't know that a white woman wrote it. Nobody said that to me, they just said, 'The Help - Oh my god, you've got to read it.' Everyone failed to mention it was a white woman, I think, because nobody really wants to talk about race.

In the Trump era, it's way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think, 'We don't have a racist bone in our bodies.' We have to face the racism in ourselves.