Systematic Racism Quotes

“There is a notion out there that black people enjoy the Sisyphean struggle against racism. In fact, most of us live for the day when we can struggle against anything else. But having been, by that very racism, pinned into ghettoes, both metaphorical and real, our options for struggle are chosen long before we are born. And so we struggle out of fear for our children. We struggle out of fear for ourselves. We struggle to avoid our feelings, because to actually consider all that was taken, to understand that it was taken systematically, that the taking is essential to America and echoes down through the ages, could make you crazy.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Even at five, I had somehow figured out
that there was a group known as ‘white people’ to whom it was now clear my
mother belonged and that many of these people would get offended at the mere
mention of their whiteness. I somehow knew instinctively that whiteness, like all
systems of power, preferred not to be interrogated.”
― Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

“The power structure understands that Black folks have been hungry for so long, fixing us a plate now that's the same size as theirs would do nothing for our hunger. After all, they're pretty full and fat.

They know we now require a much bigger plate than theirs to quiet the stomach rumblings.

They see us and know what it looks like to be less powerful. They are fighting to never FEEL it.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“It's the ones who smile at you while they're plotting in the dark that I've learned to worry about.

Sometimes the monsters we fear aren't on the opposite side" Esa Khattak”
― Ausma Zehanat Khan, A Deadly Divide