#racism

To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes, nor will it be merciful to our blindness. ↗

— William Pickens

#human-rights #racism #truth #men

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. ↗

— Harper Lee

#racism #truth #men

Achievement has no color ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#inspirational #racism #inspirational

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage? ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#racism #same-sex-marriage #freedom

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#america #become #breathing #inherit #institutional

My instinct was that it was Sidney's childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night. ↗

— Lee Grant

#begun #childhood #documentary #fearlessness #fight

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is. ↗

— Quincy Jones

#economics #found #i #money #out

Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit. ↗

— Alveda King

#because #become #binds #cannot #commit

We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and it leads to a familiar place. ↗

— Michelle Alexander

#prison #racism #age

At first glance it seems strange that the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe. It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#oppression #racism #attitude