Quotes About Racial Justice

#1. Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.

A. Philip Randolph

#2. The fate of millions of people - indeed the future of the black community itself - may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

Michelle Alexander

#3. Any racial justice movement, to be successful, must vigorously challenge the public consensus that underlies the prevailing system of control. Nooses,

Michelle Alexander

#4. Until racial justice and freedom is a reality in this land, our union will remain profoundly imperfect.

Hubert H. Humphrey

#5. We're more concerned about climate or economic equality or racial justice or anything else that is good for people and the planet, we simply must also spend some time wresting back our money-marinated democracy. This will require getting money out of politics and then getting people back in.

Annie Leonard

#6. I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.

Gregory Peck

#7. I think there is a commitment on the part of the White House to racial justice in this country, and no ambiguity.

Richard Lugar

#8. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#9. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#10. Trans women of color dangerously fall in between the cracks of racial justice, feminist and LGbt movements.

Janet Mock

#11. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.

Mark Pryor

#12. Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

Michelle Alexander

#13. I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.

Bill Ayers

#14. Racial justice is key to a compassionate, inclusive, dynamic society.

Rinku Sen

#15. The fights for media justice and racial justice have been intertwined since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Marvin Ammori

#16. Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

Joe Klein

#17. If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice.

Michael Eric Dyson

#18. One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system - in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis)

Michelle Alexander

#19. I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#20. Whatever community organization, whether it's a women's organization, or fighting for racial justice ... you will get satisfaction out of doing something to give back to the community that you never get in any other way.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#21. My hope is that feminist, racial justice, reproductive rights and LGBT movements build a coalition that centers on the lives of women who lead intersectional lives and too often fall in between the cracks of these narrow mission statements.

Janet Mock

#22. I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away.

Tom Brokaw

#23. My mother saw nothing inconsistent in her traditional desire to look after her husband and children and her radical politics. She began her civil rights work before most people had ever heard the word 'feminism,' and in those early years, she was focused on racial justice.

Ezekiel Emanuel

#24. I think racial justice - and addressing the sick and enduring legacy of structural racism - remains one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one that's particularly important for more and more white people to speak up about.

Sally Kohn

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

John Oliver Killens

#26. I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.

Simon S. Tam

#27. 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

#28. We have a history of gender and racial bias on our court that continues to undermine the system. Excluding individuals based on race is antagonistic to the pursuit of justice.

Anita Hill

#29. There are many pointers in the Bible concerning the rightness, the goodness, the beauty, the justice, the preciousness of racial harmony and diversity.

John Piper

#30. We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

Marian Wright Edelman

#31. We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.

Shirley Chisholm

#32. It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the Presidency and pass the baton to my Vice President, Naima Quarles-Burnley.

Rachel Dolezal

#33. The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.

Kenneth Clark

#34. Over and above the political, economic, sociological, and international implications of racial prejudices, their major significance is that they place unnecessary burdens upon human beings.

Kenneth Clark

#35. 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.

#36. Trans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.

Dean Spade

#37. Justice goes across racial and economic barriers - like the good Samaritan.

John M. Perkins

#38. To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#39. You can do anything you want in the United States of you wear a suit and tie...especially if you are white. That also helps.

Betty Medsger

#40. Exposing their own humility and vulnerability is one of the most difficult challenges for white antiracist, even after achieving an autonomous white racial identity.

Eileen O'Brien

#41. The criminal-justice system is, obviously, the sole source of racial tension in this country [USA] or the key institution to resolving the opportunity gap. It is a part of the broader set of challenges that we face in creating a more perfect union.

Barack Obama

#42. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.

Howard Zinn

#43. I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.

Jesse Jackson

#44. This book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow and that all those who care about social justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling this new racial caste system.

Michelle Alexander