“Negroes, as they enter our culture, are going to inherit the problems we have, but with a difference. They are outsiders and they are going to know that they have these problems. They are going to be self‑conscious; they are going to be gifted with a double vision, for, being Negroes, they are going to be both inside and outside of our culture at the same time. Every emotional and cultural convulsion that ever shook the heart and soul of Western man will shake them. Negroes will develop unique and specially defined psychological types. They will become psychological men, like the Jews... They will not only be Americans or Negroes; they will be centers of knowing, so to speak... The political, social, and psychological consequences of this will be enormous...”

— Richard Wright , book The Outsider

The Outsider (1953)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Negroes, as they enter our culture, are going to inherit the problems we have, but with a difference. They are outsider…" by Richard Wright?

Richard Wright 130

African-American writer 1908–1960

Related quotes

“If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

As quoted in "Paul Robeson and Negro Music" in The New York Times (5 April 1931)

“What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation….”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Interview with Evelyn Rich (March 1985)

“I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Tape transcripts (1971)

“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost… He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American…”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: Souls of Black Folk & Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 & Movements of the New Left 1950-1975

“Boredom is so endemic to our culture, particularly among youth, that we imagine it to be a near-universal default state of human existence. In the absence of outside stimuli we are bored. Yet…boredom is virtually unique to Western culture (and by extension to the global culture it increasingly dominates).…greed like boredom is absent in most hunter-gatherer cultures based on a more open conception of self.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Misquoted by Diane S. Dew http://www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm (2001)
Omits words from a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble Sanger proposing the "Negro Project", where Sanger wrote: "And <span style="color:darkgray">we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,</span> and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea <span style="color:darkgray">if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.</span>"
The quote was similarly misused in "Women, Race, & Class" (12 February 1983) by Angela Davis, where it is implied that that Sanger was organizing an extermination campaign and the minister would be the main propaganda milling machine.
Misattributed