Skin Color Quotes

“That mess about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin—that's some bullshit. Nobody has the right to judge anybody else. Period. If you ain't been in my skin, you ain't never gonna understand my character.”
― Emily Raboteau, The Professor's Daughter

“Hating skin color is contempt for God's divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love-inspired diversity.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Amazing how eye and skin color come in many shades yet many think sexuality is just gay or straight.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“Being a Negro’s a lie, anyway. Nobody sees the real you. Nobody knows who you are inside. You just judged on what you are on the outside whatever your color. Mulatto, colored, black, it don’t matter. You just a Negro to the world.”
― James McBride, The Good Lord Bird

“When I lived on the Bluff in Yokohama I spend a good deal of my leisure in the company of foreign residents, at their banquets and balls. At close range I was not particularly struck by their whiteness, but from a distance I could distinguish them quite clearly from the Japanese. Among the Japanese were ladies who were dressed in gowns no less splendid than the foreigners’, and whose skin was whiter than theirs. Yet from across the room these ladies, even one alone, would stand out unmistakably from amongst a group of foreigners. For the Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by a slight cloudiness. These women were in no way reticent about powdering themselves. Every bit of exposed flesh—even their backs and arms—they covered with a thick coat of white. Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water. Between the fingers, around the nostrils, on the nape of the neck, along the spine—about these places especially, dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. But the skin of the Westerners, even those of a darker complexion, had a limpid glow. Nowhere were they tainted by this gray shadow. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their fingers the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling.”
― Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

“Come hither and chat whilst I roast this pig. Afterward, you can join me in praying to our Redeemer to give thanks for our great victory to free your people. Then he added, "Half your people, since on account of your fair complexion, I reckon you is one half white or thereabouts. Which in and of itself, makes this world even more treacherous for you, sweet dear Onion, for you has to fight within yourself and outside yourself, too, being half a loaf on one side and half the other. Don't worry. The Lord don't have no contention with your condition, for Luke twelve, five says, 'Take not the breast of not just thine own mother into thy hand, but of both thy parents.”
― James McBride, The Good Lord Bird

“Dogs ain't perfect. But I'll tell you one thing where we rule: tolerance.
For us, a dog is a dog is a dog. I see a Great Dane, I say howdy. I run into a puggle, it's Glad to meet ya, how's it goin', smelled any good pee lately?
Go to a dog park and you'll see. We are equal opportunity playful. You sniff my rear, I sniff yours.
You don't see that with humans, obviously. Constantly seeing differences where none exist. All those things like skin color? Dogs could care less. You think I won't hang with a dalmatian 'cause he's spotted? Or a sharpei 'cause she's wrinkled?
I'm not saying I love every dog I meet. (Snickers comes to mind.)
But I'll always give a dog the benefit of the doubt. Life is short. Play is good. And there are plenty of tennis balls to go around.”
― Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Bob

“…in America there is no escape from the awareness of color and the fact that our society places a qualitative difference on a person of dark skin.

Every Negro comes face to face with this color shock, and it constitutes a major emotional crisis. It is accompanied by a sort of fatiguing, wearisome hopelessness. If one is rejected because he is uneducated, he can at least be consoled by the fact that it may be possible for him to get an education. If one is rejected because he is low on the economic ladder, he can at least dream of the day that he will rise from his dungeon of economic deprivation. If one is rejected because he speaks with an accent, he can at least, if he desires, work to bring his speech in line with the dominant group. If, however, one is rejected because of his color, he must face the anguishing fact that he is being rejected because of something in himself that cannot be changed. All prejudice is evil, but the prejudice that rejects a man because of the color of his skin is the most despicable expression of man’s inhumanity to man.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“I am the perfect shade of brown. I wish not to lighten my skin, but lighten the burden of those who came before me that conformed to another hue.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“I embrace and celebrate the color of my skin. Why should I reject the skin color that reflects the work my ancestors did tending to their harvests, creating homes for their families and protecting their lands?”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“That was the first time Tayo had realized that the man's skin was not much different from his own. The skin. He saw the skin of the corpses again and again, in ditches on either side of the long muddy road - skin that was stretched shiny and dark over bloated hands; even white men were darker after death. There was no difference when they were swollen and covered with flies. That had become the worst thing for Tayo: they looked too familiar even when they were alive.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

“It’s as if her whole body is endued with a magnetic layer to keep the male gaze glued to her, isn’t it? If not, how can one explain her dusky complexion?”
― B.S. Murthy, Benign Flame: Saga of Love

“Melanin Maniacs (The Sonnet)

White guy writes a couple of sonnets and plays,
And he is idolized as an olympian deity.
Colored guy smashes the paradigm to ashes,
And it warrants absolute unacceptability.
Apparently, greatness is only greatness,
If it can be credited to a caucasian.
Otherwise they only end up pondering,
What's the deal with this non-white person!
It's a sad, sad world we live in,
All the advancement is on the outside.
Inside we are dumber than Donald Duck,
Which has ruined all hope for real insight.
Enough of this obsession with white aphrodisiacs!
It's time to act as humans, and not melanin maniacs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“For those whose eyes see nothing else but difference in skin colour, kindly digest this ꓽ I have black skin, no doubt, but my teeth and eyeballs are white. This means that I am not totally black. I have seen so many white people with black hair. This means that they are not totally white. It’s all like an exchange of gifts.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“Flowers differ in color, just as humans do.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“Whiteness, like herpes, lingers forever. If you travel across South Asia, for example, you'll look at all the ads promoting beauty products and ask yourself why everyone looks like a white person from New Jersey with a summer tan. In fact, beauty is still often measured by saaf rang, or clean skin color, which refers to "light skin tone." Fair & Lovely cream sells like hotcakes all around South Asia, even though everyone knows it's bullshit and doesn't help make you either "fair" or "lovely." You can never wipe off the brown no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray, but, still, people aspire and hope maybe, one day, one bottle will contain a magical elixir that takes them to Whiteness.”
― Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American

“Before God, our blood means nothing. Virtue is in deeds, not the skin.”
― P. Djèlí Clark, A Master of Djinn

“I bathe in the sun, and I get refined instead of getting burnt.”
― Eduvie Donald

“The climate defines your skin color. A white person from a cold country will become a black person in the tropics, but the adaptation process takes thousands of years.”
― Steven Magee

“Many black people in the UK are vitamin D deficient.”
― Steven Magee

“The climate defines the skin color and skeleton structure.”
― Steven Magee

“Skin diversity is here to be celebrated.”
― Humanityisdiversity.org

“She was certain she looked more like a chipmunk than a criminal, if chipmunks were lavender and gray. Her mother had purple skin, while her father was tinted more pink, and Terlu had ended up an agreeable shade of lavender, which matched nicely with the gray cotton.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Enchanted Greenhouse

“He also looked very handsome, even though there was a smear of dirt on his gold-hued cheek that she very much wanted to wipe off. She resisted the urge, though, since he was looking at her with so much confusion and alarm in his face that she thought he might flee if she tried.
She knew what he was seeing when he looked at her: a short, plump, pastel-colored woman who was pretty in the same kind of harmless way that bunnies are pretty.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Enchanted Greenhouse

“Scarlight makes the mind, sunlight makes the skin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Staring out from a movie poster on the wall of the dinky town cinema were her sister's two bright blue eyes. Brigid was the star of the summer's blockbuster movie.
"That fucking bitch!" Phoebe swore a little too loudly. An old lady gasped and two teenage girls froze in their tracks. "It's my sister!" Phoebe tried to explain.
The two teenage girls tittered and hurried away. Nobody in Nowheresville, Georgia, was going to believe that the unkempt daughter of a swamp-living, Haitian-born artist was related to a lily-white movie star.
Phoebe bought a ticket to the matinee. There, in the dark, empty theater, she watched her sister lop off zombie heads with a samurai sword and sobbed for ninety-four minutes straight.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Women of Wild Hill

“White at last! Gone was the smooth brown complexion. Gone were the slightly full lips and Ethiopian nose. Gone was the nappy hair that he had straightened so meticulously ever since the kink-no-more lotions first wrenched Aframericans from the tyranny and torture of the comb. There would be no more expenditures for skin whiteners; no more discrimination; no more obstacles in his path. He was free! The world was his oyster and he had the open sesame of a pork-colored skin!”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More

“He was through with coons, he resolved, from now on. He glanced in a superior manner at the long line of black and brown folk on one side of the corridor, patiently awaiting treatment. He saw many persons whom he knew but none of them recognized him. It thrilled him to feel that he was now indistinguishable from nine-tenths of the people of the United States; one of the great majority. Ah, it was good not to be a Negro any longer!”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More

“Doc sez she's culled, an' she sez so, but she looks mighty white tuh me."

"Everything that looks white ain't white in this man's country," Foster replied.”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More

“Among the working classes, in the next few months, there grew up a certain prejudice against all fellow workers who were exceedingly pale.
The new Caucasians began to grow self-conscious and resent the curious gazes bestowed upon their lily-white countenances in all public places. They wrote indignant letters to the newspapers about the insults and discriminations to which they were increasingly becoming subjected. They protested vehemently against the effort on the part of employers to pay them less and on the part of the management of public institutions to segregate them.”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More