#racism

I'm not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting, but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered it more of a manifestation of humanity's problem rather than my personal problem. ↗

— Robert Guillaume

#blamed #considered #felt #honestly #humanity

Poverty is relative, and the lack of food and of the necessities of life is not necessarily a hardship. Spiritual and social ostracism, the invasion of your privacy, are what constitute the pain of poverty. ↗

— Alice Foote MacDougall

#food #hardship #invasion #lack #life

Whose little boy are you? ↗

— James Baldwin

#black #church #coming-of-age #epiphany #god

A new civil rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address meaningfully the racial realities of our time. Any racial justice movement, to be successful, must vigorously challenge the public consensus that underlies the prevailing system of control. Nooses, racial slurs, and overt bigotry are widely condemned by people across the political spectrum; they are understood to be remnants of the past, no longer reflective of the prevailing public consensus about race. Challenging these forms of racism is certainly necessary, as we must always remain vigilant, but it will do little to shake the foundations of the current system of control. The new caste system, unlike its predecessors, is officially colorblind. We must deal with it on its own terms. ↗

— Michelle Alexander

#injustice #jim-crow #racism #age

A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said. ↗

— Jamie Ford

#family #friendship #beauty

Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#racism #beauty

Paranoia is transmissible from mind to mind, but it does not go by the route of reason. It can therefore change its rationalization while remaining essentially the same. ↗

— William Nicholls

#paranoia #racism #change

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings #maya-angelou #perspective #racism #courage

I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#race-relations #racism #dreams

That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserved of their scorn. ↗

— Barack Obama

#racism #dreams