Racial Identity Quotes

“When a white man goes to the pub, he is a socializer; a Brown man in a bar is a drunkard. A white arrogant man is an alpha male; headstrong Indians are pricks. A white man sleeping around is a lover; an Indian on multiple dates is a womanizer. White men make love, we Brown Indians f*ck”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“If origin defines race, then we are all Africans – we are all black.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“Most whites do not have a racial identity, but they would do well to understand what race means for others. They should also ponder the consequences of being the only group for whom such an identity is forbidden and who are permitted no aspirations as a group.”
― Jared Taylor

“Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“In the biological sense, race does not exist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“She has always been somehow weightless, free of the heavy burden of mother tongues, national histories, native soils, homelands, fatherlands, myths, that many of the people around her tote on their backs like a sack of red-hot stones.”
― Daša Drndić

“Because whites are not socialized to see ourselves collectively, we don't see our group's history as relevant. Therefore, we expect people of color to trust us as soon as they meet us. We don't see ourselves as having to earn that trust.”
― Robin DiAngelo, What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy

“It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks.”
― Clement Alexander Price, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“The world is no longer white, black, yellow and brown. Through love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world. And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation or religion over another.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Not having a group consciousness, whites often respond defensively when grouped with other whites, resenting what they see as unfair generalizations. Individualism prevents us from seeing ourselves as responsible for or accountable to other whites as members of a shared racial group that collectively benefits from racial inequality.”
― Robin DiAngelo, What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy

“The trouble with you," Parvathi said with a wisdom beyond her years, "Is that you don't know who you want to be. Girl or boy. Chinese or Malay."

"Ya-lah you!" Fatima said. "No wonder the kids in your school call you OCBC."

There was a bank in Singapore called the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation, or OCBC in short. So some cruel kid in school played on the initials of the bank to make fun of Peranakans.

They jeered, "Orang Cina Bukan Cina." The words translated as Chinese person, not Chinese.”
― Josephine Chia, Kampong Spirit - Gotong Royong: Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965

“It is character that should be the sole measure of judgement in the society of thinking humanity, and nothing short of that would do.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“Call up the ever-pure, the effulgent and the ever-radiant character of true humanism in yourself and in others, and no racism shall have the power to thrive in such society even for a few seconds.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“By demonstrating excellence in whatever skin we wear, we challenge ignorance by our very existence.”
― Adam Howard

“Twenty years, and she had never called China hers. How could she when she had never been? She did not know its songs, its roads, its rivers. She did not know the terms of address for kin, the names of provinces, anything that she ought. All she knew was that her parents had left, and that they did not speak of what they had left behind.

[...]

Twenty years, and she was used to being asked where she was from, to giving an answer that felt like a lie. She could never be Chinese enough for China. She could never be American enough for here.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“the curse of anyone nonwhite is that you are so busy arguing what you're not that you never arrive at what you are.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“If not as a true human, let me tell you as a Biologist, color of the skin does not define an individual’s intelligence – it does not define an individual’s ambitions - it does not define an individual’s dreams – and above all, it does not define an individual’s character.”
― Abhijit Naskar, We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism

“Passing like this, was funny, heroic even. Who didn’t want to get over on white folks for a change? But the passe blanc where a mystery. You could never meet one who’d passed over undetected; the same way you’d never know someone who successfully faked her own death. The act could only be successful if no one ever discovered it was a ruse.”
― Britt Bennett

“The rise of white nationalism has led to many nonwhites defending their identities with rage and pride as well as demanding reparative action to compensate for centuries of whites plundering from non-Western cultures. But a side effect of this justified rage has been a “stay in your lane” politics in which artists and writers are asked to speak only from their personal ethnic experiences. Such a politics not only assumes racial identity is pure—while ignoring the messy lived realities in which racial groups overlap—but reduces racial identity to intellectual property.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“Well-meaning friends never failed to warn me, if a white guy was attracted to me, that he probably had an Asian fetish. The result: I distrusted my desirousness. My sexuality was a pathology. If anyone non-Asian liked me, there was something wrong with him.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“So each citizen put on a cloak in order to conceal their racial identity.”
― Lucy Carter, Logicalard Fallacoid

“If young children are frequently exposed to books containing images of people who do not look like them, or resources in the home corner which do not reflect their culture (cooking utensils, dressing-up clothes.... food), then they will come to believe that their attributes are of little value - this will have a negative impact on their racial identity. All children need to see positive images of people who look like them to enable them to think that they too can be successful and this is especially important for children who are racially minoritised. -Dr Stella Louis”
― Aisha Thomas, Representation Matters: Becoming an anti-racist educator