Quotes About Racial Discrimination

#1. Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.

Thurgood Marshall

#2. I wondered if there had been a more corroding and devastating attack upon the personalities of men than the idea of racial discrimination.

Richard Wright

#3. Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you chose for yourself, the other God chose for you.

Habeeb Akande

#4. 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.

Paul Robeson

#5. 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.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#6. 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.

Rene Cassin

#7. 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.

John Lewis

#8. 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.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#9. Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.

Trent Lott

#10. It is of the highest importance to provide equal access to the labour market. Governments should act to establish equitable employment standards and penalise racial discrimination.

Tariq Ramadan

#11. 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.

Salma Hayek

#12. 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.

David Duke

#13. Racial discrimination is illegal. It's illegal in the United States. It's illegal in Arizona. It has been and it will continue to be.

Jan Brewer

#14. Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.

William O. Douglas

#15. When growing up, I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I saw those signs that said white men, colored men. White women, colored women. White waiting. And I didn't like it.

John Lewis

#16. 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.

Jon Lajoie

#17. Real chains that we need to shed are the burdens of racial discrimination, economic disparity, religious dogmas, intolerance and social injustice, which still weigh heavily on our shoulders.

Balroop Singh

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

Thurgood Marshall

#19. 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.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#20. 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.

Chris Hayes

#21. 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.

Earl Warren

#22. After the oil crisis of 1973, many European countries tightened restrictions on immigrants. By then, millions of Muslims had decided to settle in Europe, preferring the social segregation and racial discrimination they found in the West to political and economic turmoil at home.

Pankaj Mishra

#23. 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.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#24. Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past.

George Takei

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

Jimmy Carter

#26. My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.

John Lewis

#27. As a young man in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gandhi developed satyagraha, a mode of political activism based upon moral persuasion, while mobilizing South Africa's small Indian minority against racial discrimination.

Pankaj Mishra

#28. 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.

Albert Maltz

#29. I have the utmost respect and 'aloha' for black people - who have already suffered so much due to racial discrimination and acts of hatred.

Duane Chapman

#30. We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King's success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

Jimmy Carter

#31. 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.

Clarence Thomas

#32. 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

Lionel Jospin

#33. 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.

Pope John XXIII

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

Oliver Tambo

#35. 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.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#36. Segregation in the American South was bankrolled by the wealthy eugenicist from the Northeast, Wickliffe Draper.

A.E. Samaan

#37. The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.

George Bernard Shaw

#38. A couple of years ago I was seated in an auditorium in Detroit where Reverend Cleage was explaining to a conference of priests that what they called "black separatists" were in reality men who recognized the implacability of a white-imposed separation.

John Howard Griffin

#39. When a rainbow spreads across the sky it is reminding the world that beauty comes in all colors.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#40. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

Henry A. Wallace

#41. But part of that incipient racism had always led whites to assume the leadership positions and perpetuated the view that whites rather than blacks were the heroes of the movement.

John Howard Griffin

#42. Separation is the first cause of inequality.

Katy Tackes

#43. We've all been acculturated into accepting the inevitability of wrongful convictions, unfair sentences, racial bias, and racial disparities and discrimination against the poor.

Bryan Stevenson

#44. In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical "accident" - rather than by who he is in his humanity.

John Howard Griffin

#45. A government offering such bounty to builders and lenders could have required compliance with a nondiscrimination policy. Instead, the FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws.

Charles Abrams

#46. Certainly many Northern cities deplored what was going on in the South. But when Martin Luther King, who had been so praised in the North for the work he did in the South, came to work in the cities of the North, the very officials who had praised him sometimes led opposition to his work locally.

John Howard Griffin

#47. In reality, the Us-and-Them or I-and-Thou dichotomies do not exist. There is only one universal We - one human family united by the capacity to feel compassion and to demand equal justice for all.

John Howard Griffin

#48. The problem is, some officers put more stock in their title instead of their duty. Yes, your job title is "police." But your duty is to protect and serve. Start there.

Janelle Gray

#49. My fight is not for racial sameness but for racial equality and against racial prejudice and discrimination.

John Oliver Killens

#50. Only if a Chinaman presents proof of affiliation with the West, has Western patrons vouch for him, and writes in 'pure' English, may he present his 'submission' to Western publishers.

Thorsten J. Pattberg

#51. The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years - the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt - was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.

John Howard Griffin

#52. Diversity is, by definition, discrimination. It leads to things like quotas and racial profiling.

Mary Kissel

#53. Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.

Auliq Ice

#54. When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here

Maya Angelou

#55. Jinnah is a constant source of inspiration for all those who are fighting against racial and group discrimination.

Nelson Mandela

#56. Despite the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native Americans, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, the citizens of the United States could plausibly claim, in 1945, to live in the freest society on the face of the earth.

John Lewis Gaddis

#57. Seeing race is always about discriminating, a discerning, trained eye recognizing the "essential" or defining characteristic in the individual that confers racial categorization.

Barbara Katz Rothman

#58. We never asked for racism or white supremacy but rather Whites admit that we have always been another shade of humanity.

Johnnie Dent Jr.

#59. Either you are racist or you are a human - you cannot be both.

Abhijit Naskar

#60. The ills of discrimination are still with us. We have to continue the tenacity and vigilance of the 1960s. Racial understanding is not something we find; it's something we create.

Thomas Cole

#61. As they've always been. And they don't change just because you want them to.

Dennis Lehane

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

Charlotte Bunch

#63. Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.

Bernice L. McFadden

#64. Film and novel characters are often stereotyped, but racial stereotyping in many novels or films creates & encourages labelling, discrimination & racism. ~Angelica Hopes

Angelica Hopes