Top 31 Racism Quotes

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Racism is a scourge in our society. It is something that we need to fight against. With that in mind, check out the top 31 racism quotes.

#31 – 30. Racism Quotes

31. Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make. – Ruth Benedict

30. As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports. – E. J. Hobsbawm

#29 – 20. Racism Quotes

29. If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. – Thich Nhat Hanh

28. Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites — rather than fighting for jobs or education — fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior. – Jesse Jackson

27. When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now, if you’re average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he’d be washing dishes somewhere. – Annie Elizabeth Delany

26. The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

25. Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. – Eugene Ionesco

24. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. – Harper Lee

23. I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. – James Baldwin

22. If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room. – Anita Koddick

21. Racism? But isn’t it only a form of misanthropy? – Joseph Brodsky

20. If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together. – Lila Watson

#19 – 10. Racism Quotes

19. If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. – Albert Einstein

18. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

17. Where do you think I’d be next week if I didn’t know how to shout and holler and make the public take notice? I’d be poor and I’d probably be down in my home town, washing windows or running an elevator and saying – Muhammad Ali

16. No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise. – Marian Anderson

15. Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing… then it will be done, but not until then. – Spike Lee

14. When a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman. – Medgar Evers

13. I wasn’t always black… There was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger. – Bill Cosby

12. I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo. – Frantz Fanon

11. The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War. – W. E. B. Du Bois

10. And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight. – John Lennon

#9 – 1. Racism Quotes

9. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead

8. For it isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. – Eleanor Roosevelt

7. At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being. – Friedrich Otto Hertz

6. Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility. – Mary McCarthy

5. Whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior. – Steve Biko

4. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. – Mahatma Gandhi

3. I realize that I’m black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody’s wish. – Michael Jordan

2. A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. – Thurgood Marshall

1. What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches. – Jean Genet

Ideas for the top 31 racism quotes come from the following sources.^[1]Quoteland – Racism^[2]ywca – QUOTES ON RACISM AND JUSTICE