race-in-america

None of us get to choose our race but we all get to choose how we overcome its hurtles. Whether we jump or stumble...what matters most is that we take each moment in stride. Compassion, love, forgiveness and empathy will always win the human race.

People of color are allowed, even required to perform, and, especially these days on issues of race, to edify as well. 'Here you are, now entertain us'. But are we allowed to lead?

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.

To be an American is to be accosted by bigotry and enmity for the rights that you were told to appreciate.

It's no longer time to take sides for or against race, rather sides against those who still do.

Perhaps finding out that we carry New World history in our genes will transcend racial checkboxes altogether and enable Latino-Americans to rethink what America is supposed to look like.

I tried to get away from him, to get to that door, but instead I backed up against the wall and was stuck there in that white, white room.

You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.""Or just find a white writer. White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn't threatening.

I guess I'd rather have a truthful neighbor who says he hates me than a lyin' one who claims he loves me.

Yessir, some things is sin 'cause God says so. Some things is sin 'cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid.

America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.

How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow s hall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure, -- is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?

You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.

Urging an organization to be inclusive is not an attack. It's progress.

People often call fighting racism being 'PC' when they don't want to confront their own prejudice

When you're marginalized, there are no "them people," if we're all on the outskirts of the same margin.

Racism hurts everyone, including racists themselves.