Racial Relations Quotes

“In 7.81 square miles of vaunted black community, the 850 square feet of Dum Dum Donuts was the only place in the "community" where one could experience the Latin root of the word, where a citizen could revel in common togetherness. So one rainy Sunday afternoon, not long after the tanks and media attention had left, my father ordered his usual. He sat at the table nearest the ATM and said aloud, to no one in particular, "Do you know that the average household net worth for whites is $113,149 per year, Hispanics $6,325, and black folks $5,677?"

"For real?"

"What's your source material, nigger?"

"The Pew Research Center."

Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. Pops politely asked the manager to dim the lights. I switched on the overhead projector, slid a transparency over the glass, and together we craned our necks toward the ceiling, where a bar graph titled "Income Disparity as Determined by Race" hovered overhead like some dark, damning, statistical cumulonimbus cloud threatening to rain on our collective parades.

"I was wondering what that li'l nigger was doing in a donut shop with a damn overhead projector.”
― Paul Beatty, The Sellout

“The people at the front are young, energetic, and incredibly brave. There’s a Black girl, in her twenties, skinny as a rail, with a black kerchief over her face. The kerchief is useful in both pandemics and the fog of tear gas. She wears skinny jeans and a black T-shirt with “Black Lives Matter” on it. Some white adults are as offended by her choice of wardrobe as she is by their overall indifference. She’s opposed by much larger men, outfitted like extras in Mad Max or RoboCop. The only thing threatening about her is her mouth and her willpower.

...This girl is intelligent and talented, someone who should be leading this country into the twenty-first century. Instead, she’s out in the street risking her life because she dares to be dissatisfied.”
― Gary J Floyd

“She waved me to a plaid couch in the middle of the living room floor. I eased down and looked around the sorry place. The odor of stale turnip greens was so thick, it seemed like it was seeping through the walls. Every piece of furniture looked like it belonged in the city dump, especially a chair with no legs facing the couch...If Betty Jean hadn't been so cheerful, I would have felt sorry for her.”
― Mary Monroe, Red Light Wives