Racial Discrimination Quotes

John Lennon imagined a world filled with peace and love. Martin Luther King dreamt of a world free from racial discrimination and oppression. The guy who invented the Frisbee, dreamt of a world where people would throw a fat, circular object at each other in order to pass the time. He succeeded.

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.

We have the disgrace of racial discrimination, or we have prejudice against people because of their religion. We have not had the courage to uproot these things, although we know they are wrong.

Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.....All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

I had to endure the worst time of all in terms of racial discrimination in Hollywood when i first started out. It was inconcievable to American directors and producers that a Mexican woman could have a lead role.

I wrote a piece in the New York Times back in the Nineties saying that racial discrimination ought to be a criminal offense, not just a civil one. I'm all for the criminalization of discrimination.

[It is] a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.

A man with a long history of racial discrimination should never run our government.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples' democracies.

Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.

People understand who Donald Trump is. There was a lawsuit against him for housing discrimination, racial discrimination against African-Americans that`s been in "The New York Times". Decades ago with "The New York Times".

The conviction that all men are equal by reason of their natural dignity has been generally accepted. Hence racial discrimination can no longer be justified.

The exploitation of women, mass hunger, disregard for freedom of conscience and for freedom of speech, widespread and racial discrimination all these evils are far too prevalent to be overlooked.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.

How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years, should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial?....consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government, is a principle universally acknowledged as sacred throughout the civilized world.

The NYPD with the unconditional support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stopped-and-frisked more black men than there are black men in New York City. Institutionalized racial discrimination in the United States is alive and well.

If a white man falls off a chair drunk, it's just a drunk. If a Negro does, it's the whole damn Negro race.

The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?

We put no condition of any kind to the U.S., we don't want it to change its system, we don't want racial discrimination to cease in the U.S., we put no conditions to the establishment of relations.

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.

I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new ‘niggers’ are gays. It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

A good many people voted for [Barack] Obama, and I'm not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country.

Communism will never be defeated by atomic bombs. Our greatest defense against Communism is to take offensive action on behalf of justice and righteousness. We must seek to remove conditions of poverty, injustice, and racial discrimination.

I wasn't thinking about history. I was thinking about how we were going to end segregation at lunch counters in Atlanta, Georgia.We would have never thought about making history, we just thought: Here is our chance to get out our sense of rejection at this kind of racial discrimination. I don't know that there was a time that anybody growing up in the South wasn't enraged about being segregated and being discriminated against.

Racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970.

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, he is trash.

I believe we should work to end all racism in American society and staunchly defend the inherent rights of every person. I have clearly stated in prior interviews that I abhor racial discrimination and would have worked to end segregation. Even though this matter was settled when I was 2, and no serious people are seeking to revisit it except to score cheap political points, I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.

What surprises me is-even though discrimination against women and racial discrimination still exist, they have improved a lot, especially among artists. And just when I felt I could finally take a break, I encounter the age discrimination. I turned 72 and started noticing a drastic difference in people's attitudes. I started with racism and sexism in the beginning and fought them so hard and was finally ready to relax. Then, here comes ageism, and I feel like, "Give me a break!"

Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

Remember, Donald [Trump] started his career back in 1973 being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans, and he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy. He actually was sued twice by the Justice Department.

I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.

It is with great satisfaction that I learned of the adoption by consensus of the Durban Declaration against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and the intolerance associated with it

And affirmative action is a very nice term for racial discrimination against better-qualified white people in jobs, employment, promotions and scholarships, and college admittance.

I agree with the (Supreme Court's) holding that racial discrimination in higher education admissions will be illegal in 25 years. They are illegal now.

Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.

I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

I come out of the environment of the Deep South, where I had seen the millstone of racial discrimination weighting down my people, both the black people and the white people; and I had seen the enormous progress that we were able to make after we removed the legal restraints of a two-class society, with the whites superior and blacks inferior. So I was very convinced before I became President that basic human rights, equality of opportunity, the end of abuse by governments of their people, was a basic principle on which the United States should be an acknowledged champion.

These were always obsessions of mine, even as a very young child. These were things that interested me as the years went on. My friends were more preoccupied with social issues - issues such as abortion, racial discrimination, and Communism - and those issues just never caught my interest. Of course they mattered to me as a citizen to some degree...but they never really caught my attention artistically.