race-and-racism-in-america

In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.

It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in any case really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was when John was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual existence.

In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he'd never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed that Negroes had their own special kind of grieving ritual, another language, something other than tears they used to express their sadness.

Bigotry lives not just in our words, but in our actions, thoughts, and institutions.

The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else__ children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose.

Divided we are as people but if we stand together and fight we as a race will unite.

Only God can break through the variegated walls of skin to capture the one and only hue of the heart. One Blood.

If origin defines race, then the entire human race is African.

When one attains self-knowledge, distinctions of race and religion vanish.

Acknowledging that all our land was stolen from Native people feels like too great a burden, so we create an alternative reality that allows us to disengage emotionally from the truth.

Racist legacy laws and modern racist practices are all part of the same system, and it needs to be changed now.

Electing a bigot enables further bigotry.

Discrimination does not 'make America great.' It makes America weak.

Prejudice plunges you into a world of fear and hate. That's no way to live.

...all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...

When you've grown up mis-educated, surrounded by fear and hate, unaware of your privilege, lies can sound like the truth.

What matter most is to complete the journey.

That summer, in any case, all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me, and drove me into the church.