Quotations on / about racism

Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.

(Florynce R. Kennedy (b. 1916), African American lawyer, civil rights activist, and feminist. As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 10, by Hay Mills (1993). In a February 22, 1990 interview, recalling her civil rights work in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1964.)
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... excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

(Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954), African American television personality and actress. As quoted in I Dream a World, by Brian Lanker (1989). Born in Mississippi, she became the first African American woman to host a nationally syndicated weekday television talk show and the first to found her own television and film production company. She was also among the few to be nominated for an Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actress in The Color Purple [1985]).)
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?

(Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940), Russian-born U.S. poet, critic. "Flight from Byzantium," sct. 9, Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986).)
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You factor in racism as a reality and you keep moving.

(Jewell Jackson McCabe (b. 1945), African American professional. As quoted in I Dream a World, by Brian Lanker (1989). McCabe was President of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.)
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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.

(Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924), African American politician. Unbought and Unbossed, ch. 13 (1970).)
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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 (b. 1956), U.S. filmmaker. Interview in Roger Ebert's Home Movie Companion (1990).)
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We should have learnt by now that laws and court decisions can only point the way. They can establish criteria of right and wrong. And they can provide a basis for rooting out the evils of bigotry and racism. But they cannot wipe away centuries of oppression and injustice—however much we might desire it.

(Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), U.S. Democratic politician, vice president. Speech, June 1, 1966, White House Conference, Washington, DC.)
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When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when antiracism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other and both interests lose.

(Kimberly Crenshaw (b. 1959), African American author. Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, ch. 14 (1992).)
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It has been observed that while anti-black racism charges its object with inferiority, anti-Semitism charges its object with iniquity. The racist believes that blacks are incapable of running anything by themselves. The anti-Semite believes (in one popular bit of folklore) that thirteen rabbis rule the world.

(Henry Louis, Jr. Gates (b. 1950), U.S. author, educator. "Backlash?" New Yorker (May 17, 1993).)
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Today, almost forty years later, I grow dizzy when I recall that the number of manufactured tanks seems to have been more important to me than the vanished victims of racism.

(Albert Speer (1905-1981), German architect, Nazi official. The Slave State, ch. 21 (1981).)
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