240 Race Quotes

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity-for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race. (13th February 1945)

I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

For me, soldiers are all equal. Those black people wore your same uniform, fought on your side, and so you will be in the same jail.

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.

There are only two races (and they are not distinguished by color): those who are free and those who are not.

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith-based... I want to cut his nuts off. Barack, he's talking down to black people.

People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.

Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.

The Jews are a race and not a religion. My goal was not to persecute the Jews but to enlighten Gentiles to put them on guard.

Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race.

The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate's career. He can either forget it, or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter.

As late as the summer of 1941, the Atlantic Monthly, then a still respected magazine for literates and edited by White men, published a long article by Albert Jay Nock, in which he proved that the Jews are an Oriental race that is incompatible with ours. He was not punished and the magazine was not destroyed, strange and almost incredible as that seems today.

Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood.

But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?

The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.

Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?

I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.

It's great to be black in Hollywood. When a black actor does something, it seems new and different just by virtue of the fact that he's black.

My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.

Shaq is rich. The white man who signs his check : is wealthy. 'Ah, here you go, Shaq. Go buy yourself a bouncing car. Bling, bling!'

So if you're black or brown, you can make money in America, you can get rich in America : but whatever you decide to do, it better be positive, 'cause if one person is harmed, you will be destroyed. You see Oprah, she just be giving away money. She's doing that to keep the Feds off her back.

'Terrorists don't take black hostages. Thats the truth. I have yet to see one of us on the news reading a hostage letter. Like, 'Uh...they is treatin us good. Uh we are chillin and shit. I'd like to give a shout out to Ray-Ray an Big Steve and uh, send some Newports!' '

The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the 'legitimate' votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the 'real' Americans the Democrats must pursue.

Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word 'race' has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means.

But we [Americans] are as other men, exactly. Of one blood, one species, one brain, one figure, one fundamental set of collective instincts, one solitary body of information, one everything. Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.

The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth.

Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others - white and black - preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence. We can be so thankful that Dr. King raised his mighty eloquence for love and hope rather than for hostility and bitterness. He took the tension he found in our nation, a tension of injustice, and channeled it for the good of America and all her people.

The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

The same crime element that white people are scared of black people are scared of. While they waiting for legislation to pass, we next door to the killer. All them killers they let out, they're in that building. Just because we black, we get along with the killers? What is that? We need protection too.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African. The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American. This is my country. My people helped to build it and we've been here for centuries. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.

A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery. Our study clearly shows that employers would rather not hire a lot of workers from the inner city. They feel people from the inner city are not job-ready, that the kids have been poorly educated, that they can't read, they can't write, they can't speak.

That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

You give me a set of conditions and I can produce racism in any society. You give me a different set of conditions and I can reduce racism. You give me a situation where there are a sufficient number of social resources so people don't have to compete for those resources, and I will show you a society where racism is held in check.

I do not believe in races.

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Who's more racist, black people or white people? Black people! You know why? Because black people hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

'You know you'll be walking down the street and see a group of black dudes walkin. And not just any black dudes we talking, you know, thugs. And sometimes, you'll see one or two or as many as three white guys with em. You see that shit? Let me tell you something about them white guys. Those white guys are the most dangerous mother fuckers in them groups. Its true. They aint no tellin what they've done to get them black dudes' respect. I've been telling brothers that; every group should have at least one white guy in it. For safety. Cause when shit goes down...some body's gonna need to talk to the police.'

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be 'accepted' by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

Niggers was the ones with the rope, hanging off trees; Niggas are the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs.

I'm an artist; art has no color and no sex.

Do you have blacks, too?

In saying this, I promise you I am quite free of all racial hatred. It is, in any case, undesirable that one race should mix with other races. Except for a few gratuitous successes, which I am prepared to admit, systematic cross-breeding has never produced good results. Its desire to remain racially pure is a proof of the vitality and good health of a race. Pride in one's own race-and that does not imply contempt for other races-is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilisations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilisation to which we belong. Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them. (13th February 1945)

As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.

You can't have shit when you around niggers, you can't have shit. You can't have no big screen TV! You can have it, but you better move it in at 3 in the morning. Paint it white, hope niggers think it's a bassinet. Can't have shit in your house! Why?! Because niggers will break into your house. Niggers that live next door to you break into your house, come over the next day and go, 'I heard you got robbed.' Nigger, you know you robbed me. You didn't see shit 'cause you was doing shit!

Black people dominate sports in the United States. We're 10% of the population, we're 90% of the Final Four.

Hollywood is run by Jews. It is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity. They should have greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering because they've [been] exploited. We have seen the nigger, we've seen the greaseball, we have seen the chink, the slit-eyed dangerous Jap. We have seen the wily Filipino. We've seen everything, but we never saw the kike, because they know perfectly well that is where you draw the wagons around.

Sorry to say this, I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.

Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice/I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots/I give a holler to my sisters on welfare/Tupac cares, and don't nobody else care

I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.

You and I are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other races. Whether it be right or wrong, I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living amongst us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.

There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as an equal... Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the Negro in the tropics and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.

(Lincoln had a) humane interest in the welfare of my whole race.

The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again. The whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the demonic. We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race.[1][2]

Our racial pride is not aggressive except in so far as the Jewish race is concerned. We use the term Jewish race as a matter of convenience, for in reality and from the genetic point of view there is no such thing as the Jewish race. There does, however, exist a community, to which, in fact, the term can be applied and the existence of which is admitted by the Jews themselves. It is the spiritually homogenous group, to membership of which all Jews throughout the world deliberately adhere, regardless of their whereabouts and of their country of domicile; and it to this group of human beings to which we give the title Jewish race. (13th February 1945)

'There is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear ... that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.'

a question on reparations has got to be confusing when you're half-white and half-black. What do you do? Demand an apology for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees - which is the same way federal aid works.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We've got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. ... This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things.

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away, and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society.

So when black Americans refer to Obama as 'one of us,' I do not know what they are talking about. In his new book, 'The Audacity of Hope,' Obama makes it clear that, while he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own - nor has he lived the life of a black American.

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination - the 'Magic Negro.'

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American.

The white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence.... Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.

It is sometimes maintained that racial mixture is biologically undesirable. There is no evidence whatever for this view. Nor is there, apparently, any reason to think that Negroes are congenitally less intelligent than white people, but as to that it will be difficult to judge until they have equal scope and equally good social conditions.

My wife has just finished reading aloud your 'Life with a Black Regiment,' and you must allow me to thank you heartily for the very great pleasure which it has in many ways given us. I always thought well of the negroes, from the little which I have seen of them; and I have been delighted to have my vague impressions confirmed, and their character and mental powers so ably discussed. When you were here I did not know of the noble position which you had filled. I had formerly read about the black regiments, but failed to connect your name with your admirable undertaking. Although we enjoyed greatly your visit to Down, my wife and myself have over and over again regretted that we did not know about the black regiment, as we should have greatly liked to have heard a little about the South from your own lips.

Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. But since he attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.

When I see a fine sister with a white man, I get pissed. I get mad. I don't get violent, but I get mad. I'm like, 'Damn, baby, what do I got to do : to get with you?' I mean, what must I do?

'Yo, I heard Chris got hit by a bus!' 'Fucked around with a white girl!'

Debbie Thomas went to the Olympics : bust her ass! Fucked around with a white boy!

There's nothing that a white man with a penny hates more : than a nigger with a nickel!

A black man failing black history : you know, fat people don't fail cooking.

That shit wasn't about race : that shit was about fame. If O.J. wasn't famous, he'd be in jail right now. If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J. He'd be Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer.

Ed Bradley looked at Michael Jackson like he wanted to say, 'Nigger, is you crazy?' Like he wanted to take the the 60 Minutes clock and push the shit forward to say, 'Nigger, what the fuck is wrong with you?' 'I thought you said it was 60 minutes :' 'It's 10 minutes, get outta here! You nutty nigger, what the fuck is wrong with you?'

Black people dominate this shit! Basketball, baseball, football, boxing, track! Even golf and tennis! And the minute they make a heated hockey rink, we're gonna take that shit too. Motherfuck Wayne Gretzky. Wait 'till you see LeBron on some skates. You ain't seen nothing yet! He just gonna have one skate, chilling. He won't even have a stick, he'll just smack the puck in with his dick. Pow! Slapshot Bitch!

A black C student can't do shit with his life. A black C student can't be a manager at Burger King, meanwhile a white C student just happens to be the President of the United States.

What is on Kobe's mind? Going to Colorado, around all these white people, and not bringing Johnny Cochran?

A lot of white people like to scream they're American as if they've got something to do with the country being the way it is : like they was on the Mayflower or some shit.