discrimination Quotes

“Scarlett, the mere fact that you’ve made a success of your mill is an insult to every man who hasn’t succeeded.”

“JUROR #4: We’re not here to go into the reasons why slums are breeding grounds for criminals. They are. I know it.”

″‘Can you raise your back, or purr, or throw out sparks?’ said the tom cat. ‘No.’ ‘Then you have no right to express an opinion when sensible people are speaking.‘”

“Mama: Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out all seem to cost twice as much as other houses. I did the best I could.”

“So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle—which he never does. Because even though he wants to change it, and maybe even tries to change it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind.”

“They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it’s time for you to die, because this is a convenient date and time.”

“There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites. There were one or two nightclubs for colored, but they were not very good.”

“I smiled and sat down, suddenly aware of what being of Japanese ancestry was going to be like. I wouldn’t be faced with physical attack, or with overt shows of hatred. Rather, I would be seen as someone foreign, or as someone other than American, or perhaps not be seen at all.”

“If slavery had been abolished I too could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws.”

“They thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach…”

“She was ‘nervous,’ she suffered ‘little spells’—such were the sheltering expressions used by those close to her. Not that the truth concerning ‘poor Bonnie’s afflictions’ was in the least a secret; everyone knew she had been an on-and-off psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years.”

“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.”

“The band teacher knew I had more experience than anyone else competing that year . . . But he was afraid to use me. He had to go speak to the board about it, and to some of the parents, to see if it was allowable for an Oriental to represent the high school in such a visible way.”

“I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks.”

“Got up here and found out . . . not only couldn’t you get a job . . . you couldn’t find no place to live. I thought I was in freedom. Shhh. Colored folks living down there on the riverbanks in whatever kind of shelter they could find for themselves.”

“The colored guy got to be twice as good before he get on the team. That’s why I don’t want you to get all tied up in them sports. Man on the team and what it get him? They got colored on the team and don’t use them. Same as not having them. All them teams the same.”

“If an entire nation could see its freedom, why not a girl?”

″‘Those people,’ he said, pointing in the direction the women and children had gone, ‘I thought they locked them up.’ ‘Oh, that was some years back. Right after Pearl Harbor. But now they’ve turned them all loose again. Sent them home.‘”

“Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow.”

″‘Papa, the son’s feeling will be hurt if he sees this. He wouldn’t be pleased. We should paint over it.’ ‘I’m glad you feel that way. That’s exactly what we should do. We need to look inside the house too, but it will take some time to go through their things.‘”

“Medea: Because I have a little knowledge, some are filled with jealousy, others think me secretive, and crazy. ”

“In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.”

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”

“No discrimination against union men.”