75. Got RACISM? -- Quotations on the Black Perspective in America

The ThreeSources
of
these
Quotations
on
our
American Race
Issues:

"Talking Drums:
An
African-American
Quote
Collection",

compiled

and

edited

by
Anita
Doreen
Diggs,

St. Martin's Griffin,

New York,

1995

 +

"'And
Don't Call
Me
a Racist!':
A Treasury
of Quotes
on the
Past,
Present,
and
Future
of the Color Line
in America",

selected

and

arranged

by
Ella Mazel,

Argonaut Press,

1998

 +

"African-American

Wisdom",

by

Millie Mackiney,

Great Quotations

Publishing Company,
2004
 
+++
 
"America
is false
to the Past,
false
to the Present,
and
solemnly
binds herself
to be false
to the Future."
 
-- Frederick Douglass,
1852

[Mazel, p. 5]

"The age-old

racial divide
is no less
yawning
than before."
 
-- Randall Robinson,
1998
[Mazel, p. 5]
 
"There is
never time
in the Future
in which
we will work out
our Salvation.
 
The challenge
is in the moment,
the Time
is always Now."
 
-- James Baldwin,
1961
[Mazel, p. 5]

"To those
Arkansans
who ask
how long
the state
will have to deal with
the legacy
of Little Rock:
 
Until Justice
is the same
for
every human being,
whether
he or she
is black or white,
we will deal with it.
 
Until
the same Rules apply
to get a bank loan
for every person
regardless
of who he or she is,
we will deal with it.
 
As long as
there are whites
who turn around
and see
a black person coming
and it brings
Fear to their hearts,
we'll deal with it.
 
And as long as
there are blacks
who have
Resentment
toward
a white person,
we'll deal with it."
 
-- Governor
Mike Huckabee,
1997
[Mazel, p. 5]
 

"Discrimination

is not just
an ugly stain
from
this nation's Past,
it's still
the reality
of the Present."
 
-- Andrew Cuomo,
1998
[Mazel, p. 6]

"Thanks
to the sixties,
we have
a new climate
of race relations
in the country.
 
Black mayors
in our largest cities.
 
Corporate
executives.
 
On the other hand,
we have
Depression levels
of unemployment,
the collapse
of the public
school system,
and
the epidemic
of hard drugs.
 
Everything
appears
to have changed,
yet nothing
has changed.
 
Black people
are still
at the bottom."
 
-- Lerone Bennett, Jr.,
1992
[Mazel, p. 7]

"Wisdom
is higher
than
a Fool
can reach!"
 
-- Phyllis Wheatley
[Mackiney, p. 159]

"He
who does
evil,
expects
evil."
 
-- Guinea Proverb
[Mackiney, p. 134]
 
"Sometimes I feel
discriminated against,
but it does not
make me angry.
 
It merely
astonishes me.
 
Why would anyone
deny themselves
the pleasure
of my company?"
 
-- Zora Neale Hurston
[Mackiney, p. 135]
 
"There are
some people
who,
if they
don't know,
you
can't tell 'em."
 
-- Louis Armstrong
[Mackiney, p. 96]
 
"History
is
a people's memory,
and
without a memory,
a man
is demoted
to the lower animals."
 
-- Malcolm X,
1964
[Diggs, p. 66]
 

"We need to

haunt the halls
of History
and
listen anew
to
the ancestor's wisdom."
 
-- Maya Angelou,
The New York Times,
August 25, 1991
[Diggs, p. 67]
 
"In the context
of
the Negro problem
neither
whites nor blacks,
for excellent reasons
of their own,
have
the faintest desire
to look back;
but I think that
the Past
is all that makes
the Present
coherent,
and further,
that
the Past
will remain horrible
for
exactly as long as
we refuse
to
assess it honestly."
 
-- James Baldwin,
"Notes of
a Native Son",
1955
[Diggs, p. 66]

"History

is a clock
that people use
to tell
the Cultural
and Political
time of day.
 
It is also
a Compass
that people use
to
find themselves
on the map
of
human geography."
 
-- Dr. John Henri Clarke,
The Daily News,
February 27, 1994
[Diggs, p. 67]
 
"Dignity
is
fighting
Weakness
and
winning."
 
-- Lola Falana.
[Mackiney, p. 21]
 
"You have to
be tough
and
stick it out,
or
you wind up
being
nothing but
a Wino
or
a Junkie."
 
-- Joe Louis
[Mackiney, p. 21]
 
"Every try
will not
succeed.
 
If you live,
your business
is trying."
 
-- John Killens
[Mackiney, p. 47]
 
"Education
is the jewel
casting brilliance
into
the Future."
 
-- Mari Evans
[Mackiney, p. 46]
 
"'A Word
to the Wise'
ain't necessary.
 
It's
the
Stupid ones
who
need
the advice."
 
-- Bill Cosby
[Mackiney, p. 86]
 
"Combine
a tough mind
and
a tender heart."
 
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
[Mackiney, p. 87]
 
"Never
surrender
your dreams."
 
-- Jesse Jackson
[Mackiney, p. 94]
 
"Learning
without
Wisdom
is
a load of books
on
a donkey's back."
 
-- Zora Neale Hurston
[Mackiney, p. 112]
 
"If you
want to see
how much
folks
are going
to miss you,
just
stick your finger
in
a glass of water,
then
pull it out
and look
at
the hole."
 
-- Traditional
American Proverb
[Mackiney, p. 113]
 
 
"Just being
a Negro
doesn't
qualify you
to
understand
the
race situation
any more
than
being sick
makes you
an expert
on Medicine."
 
-- Dick Gregory,
"Nigger", 1964
[Diggs, p. 118]
 
"Racism
is
so universal
in this country,
so widespread,
and
deep-seated,
that it
is invisible
because
it is
so normal."
 
-- Shirley Chisolm,
"Unbought
and Unbossed", 1970
[Diggs, p. 119]
 
"If a man
like Malcolm X
could change
and
repudiate racism,
if
I myself
and
other
former Muslims
can change,
if
young whites
can change,
then
there is hope
for America."
 
-- Eldridge Cleaver,
"Soul on Ice",
1968
[Diggs, p. 119]
 
"The greatest
and
most immediate
danger
of
White Culture
is
its fear
of the Truth,
its childish
belief
in
the efficacy
of Lies
as
a method
of
human uplift."
 
-- W. E. B. DuBois,
"Dusk of Dawn",
1940

[Diggs, p. 137]

"Truth
pressed
to earth
will
rise again ...
no lie
can live
forever ..."
 
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.,
The New York Times,
March 26, 1965
[Diggs, p. 137]
 
"It is not true,
as so many
commentators
have said,
that
Nat Turner
initiated
a wave
of violence
in Southampton.
 
The violence
was
already there.
 
Slavery
was
Violence.
 
Nat Turner's
acts...
were
responses
to
that violence."
 
-- Lerone Bennett, Jr.,
"Before
the Mayflower",
1962
[Diggs, p. 140]
 

"With

the passage
of time,
I became
increasingly aware
of how
all the adults
around me ...
were living
with
constant fear
and
apprehension.
 
It felt
as though
we always
had
a white foot
pressed against
the back
of our necks."
 
-- Melba Patillo Beals,
1994
[Mazel, p. 75]
 

"The

constant danger
which
enshadows
the
Negro American
all his life --
danger
of
small and great
indignities,
and
of
actual
physical harm
or
outright
destruction --
is
something that
cannot
be conveyed
to those
who
have not
lived through it."
 
-- Margaret Halsey,
1946
[Mazel, p. 75]
 
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