“The experience of Negroes in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups. It is not merely the history of slavery alone, but also that a whole people were marked as inferior by the law. And that mark has endured.”

—  Thurgood Marshall

Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 400-401 (1978) (Marshall, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

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 "The experience of Negroes in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups. …" by Thurgood Marshall?
Thurgood Marshall photo
Thurgood Marshall11
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court 1908–1993

Related quotes

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The Irish moved from semi-slavery in Ireland to freedom in America only a few years before the Negro gained emancipation. After a century and a quarter, or less, the Irish are a leading power in the United States, and the Negroes remain on the lowest strata. The basic difference between the Irish and the Negro has not been color: it has been character. The Negroes demand more aid, i. e., more slavery and slave-care, and dwell on their sufferings. The Irish have instead looked to the present and future and helped shape America. It is a significant difference that cannot be explained altogether by color or environment. The Chinese also came to the United States under very difficult circumstances and similarly overcame them.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), p. 19

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Ibid., p. 44.
1880s

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“…the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves…”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), pp. 3-4

“The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 427.

Amir Taheri photo

“Yes, Afghanistan is composed of 18 different communities marked by ethnic, linguistic and religious differences. But ask any Afghan who he is, and he won’t hesitate to reply: an Afghan! The national identity has taken shape over 300 years — after all, as a state, Afghanistan is older than America, Germany and Italy. It is also one of the oldest Muslim nation-states.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

&quot;Myths of our Afghanistan debate&quot; http://nypost.com/2009/10/15/myths-of-our-afghanistan-debate/, New York Post (October 15, 2009). <br class="br">New York Post

Gunnar Myrdal photo

“The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes. As in the case of the Negro, women themselves have often been brought to believe in their inferiority of endowment.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 1077. Appendix 5

“Who were the Macedonians? As an ethnic question it is the best avoided, since the mainly modern political overtones tend to obscure the fact that it really is not a very important issue. That they may or may not have been Greek in whole or in a part--while an interesting anthropological sidelight--is really not crucial to our understanding of their history. They made their mark not as a tribe of Greeks or other Balkan peoples, but as Macedonians. This was understood by foreign protagonists from the time of Darius and Xerxes to the age of Roman generals.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

Source: In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990), p. 97

Gunnar Myrdal photo

“Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Myrdal (1984), quoted in: Revue internationale de pédagogie expérimentale, Vol. 22-23. H. Dunantlaan 1. (1985), p. 367

Béla H. Bánáthy photo

“The degree to which they are a community is marked by the degree of effort they devote to attain their purpose, the degree of their commitment to it, and the degree of their commitment to each other.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 231; About the essence of the design community

George W. Bush photo

“The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free. My Nation's journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)
Context: By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free. My Nation's journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

Related topics