Quotes about white
page 29

Robert Mugabe photo
Jeremy Hunt photo
Theresa May photo

“People talk about the sort of Brexit that there is going to be. Is it hard or soft? Is it grey or white? Actually we want a red, white and blue Brexit; that is the right Brexit for the UK, the right deal for the UK. I believe that a deal that is right for the UK will also be a deal that is right for the EU.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brexit: EU negotiator says 'time's short' for reaching deal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38221140 BBC News (6 December 2016)
2010s, On Brexit

Muhammad photo
William H. Crogman photo
George Jones photo
Yehudi Menuhin photo
Morarji Desai photo
Christian Dior photo
Michael Grimm photo

“Everybody get up against the fucking wall. The FBI is in control. All the white people get out of here.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

In New York City, New York (July 1999). As quoted in "Congressman Grimm and the Nightclub" http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/congressman-michael-grimm-at-the-caribbean-tropics.html (29 April 2011), The New Yorker, by Evan Ratliff.
1990s

Chinua Achebe photo

“We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true.”

[said Obierika]
"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 15 (p. 130)

James Bolivar Manson photo

“A flushed face, white hair and a twinkle in his eye; and this twinkling got him out of scrapes that would have sunk a worthier man without trace.”

James Bolivar Manson (1879–1945) British artist

Kenneth Clark, quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. ISBN 1854372319.

Joel Chandler Harris photo
Byron White photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Richard Wright photo
Dylan Moran photo

“Would you like red or white wine with your piece of vulcanised lizards cock from the moon? How about an extra bread roll, there to dip in your otter vomit pate?”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

And you're going, "Red or white wine, well, what would you like, darling? I don't know, what would you like?", all to block out the thought that's in your mind which is - "We're gonna die, we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die, right now. The plane is made of metal, the wings are made of metal, we're all eating, and I'm the only non-terrorist aboard, we're all going to die."
On travelling by aeroplane.
Like, Totally (2006)

John Mayer photo

“I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

In answer to the question, "Do black women throw themselves at you?"
The Playboy interview (2010)

Conrad Aiken photo

“One white rose... or is it pink, to-day?”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Stokely Carmichael photo

“The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!”

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) American activist

addressing a crowd alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others during the March Against Fear, 1966, Link http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/filmmore/pt.html

Gene Roddenberry photo
Steve Biko photo
Greta Garbo photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Margaret Cho photo
Jamelle Bouie photo
Jamelle Bouie photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There is also need for leadership and concern on the part of white people of good will in the North, if this problem is to be solved. Genuine liberalism on the question of race. And what we too often find in the North is a sort of quasi-liberalism based on the principle of looking objectively at all sides, and it is a liberalism that gets so involved in looking at all sides, that it doesn’t get committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it fails to get subjectively committed. It is a liberalism that is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. And we must come to see that his problem in the United States is not a sectional problem, but a national problem. No section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. It is one thing for a white person of good will in the North to rise up with righteous indignation when a bus is burned in Anniston, Alabama, with freedom riders, or when a nasty mob assembles around a University of Mississippi, and even goes to the point of killing and injuring people to keep one Negro out of the university, or when a Negro is lynched or churches burned in the South; but that same person of good will must rise up with the same righteous indignation when a Negro in his state or in his city cannot live in a particular neighborhood because of the color of his skin, or cannot join a particular academic society or fraternal order or sorority because of the color of his or her skin, or cannot get a particular job in a particular firm because her happens to be a Negro. In other words, a genuine liberalism will see that the problem can exist even in one’s front and back yard, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Thurgood Marshall photo
Luis Alberto Urrea photo

“I have always been amazed that it seems to come as a shock to people that Mexicans are human beings. And on a philosophical level, I always remind interviewers that “the border” has nothing to do being Mexican or not. The border is simply a metaphor for what divides and wounds us as people – and I mean that “border” between any group of people, gay-straight, black-white, Muslim-Jewish, etc…”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On how the term border may be applied to other social divides in “Interview with Pulitzer Prize Finalist Luis Alberto Urrea” https://www.latinobookreview.com/interview-with-pulitzer-prize-finalist-luis-alberto-urrea--latino-book-review.html in Latino Book Review (2018 Feb 25)

Audre Lorde photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“The real issue is not whether you're black or white, whether you're a woman or a man. In my view, a woman could be elected president of the United States. The real issue is whose side are you on? Are you on the side of workers and poor people, or are you on the side of big money and the corporations?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1988, quoted in * 2020-01-14
Video emerges of Sanders saying in 1988 a woman could be elected president
Zack Budryk
The Hill
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/478299-video-emerges-of-sanders-saying-a-woman-could-be-elected-president-in-1988
1980s

Bernie Sanders photo
Alexander Calder photo
Chief Joseph photo
Chief Joseph photo
Chief Joseph photo
T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Ounsi el-Hajj photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Eagle Woman photo

“Shame on you, cowards to come here, five thousand of you, to slaughter a half-dozen white men. And you come here for what reason? You have been killing their cattle right along, day after day, and not one of them has said anything to you about the loss - and then when you shoot one of your own people, you come here to kill a white man for it ... You are not brave to come here to kill a half-dozen white men!”

Eagle Woman (1820–1888) American peace activist (born 1820, near Big Bend of the Missouri River [in what is now South Dakota], U.S.…

Speech to the same crowd of 5,000, as recounted by a different source, quoted in [Gray, John S., 1986, The Story of Mrs. Picotte-Galpin, a Sioux Heroine: Eagle Woman Becomes a Trader and Counsels for Peace, 1868-1888, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4518988, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 36, 3, 2–21, 0026-9891]

Eagle Woman photo

“Have I not told you that the white men are as thick as the blades of grass' I have been to the lodge of the Great Father. I know what I say! Now break up your council of war. Leave here - and I will make you a great feast.”

Eagle Woman (1820–1888) American peace activist (born 1820, near Big Bend of the Missouri River [in what is now South Dakota], U.S.…

Speaking to an angry mob of 5,000 which had surrounded the general store on the Grand River reservation, as quoted in Eagle Woman Who All Look At, 2010, South Dakota Hall of Fame – Champions of Excellence, 2019-08-15 http://sdexcellence.org/Eagle_Woman_Who_All_Look_At_2010,

Mona Chalabi photo

“The facts are as exhaustive as they are exhausting. There’s one simple conclusion from all of this. We’ve been tricked. We’ve been told that America, like most other majority-white countries, deserves the title “developed economy.””

Mona Chalabi (1987) British data journalist

It does not. You cannot charge a woman $39.95 to hold the baby that she has just given birth to. You cannot constantly operate hospitals at close to capacity in order to maximize profits. The pursuit of private money in systems built for public good has not worked ethically or practically.
Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020

Nalo Hopkinson photo
Charles Kingsley photo

“I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . .”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

In a letter written from Markree Castle, Sligo to his wife dated July 4th 1860. Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memoirs https://archive.org/details/charleskingsleyh00kingiala/page/308 (1877)

Dan Abnett photo
Tecumseh photo

“The white men aren't friends to the Indians... At first they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds from the rising to the setting sun.”

Tecumseh (1768–1813) Native American leader of the Shawnee

Quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP5CH12LE.html

Tecumseh photo

“You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.
You ask me to dig for stones! Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.
You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men, but how dare I cut my mother's hair?
I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother.”

Smohalla (1815–1895) Native American prophet-dreamer

As quoted in The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee (1890) by James Mooney on page 721; it has been sometimes also ascribed to w:Wovoka, which seems misappropriated as Mooney himself mentions Wovoka in the same book from page 765 on.
"It is perhaps the most commonly cited piece of evidence documenting the Native American belief in Mother Earth. […]They rarely place the statement in the context in which Mooney presented it, that is, the history of millenarian movements spawned in part by the pressures Native American felt from the European-Americans' insatiable desire for land […] it is a direct response to 'white' pressures placed on native relationships with the land." From Mother Earth. An American Story. https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo5975950.html

Donald J. Trump photo

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet, as quoted by * 2020-04-26

Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments

Lauren Aratani

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/25/donald-trump-stays-away-from-briefings-amid-fallout-from-disinfectant-comments
2020s, 2020, April

Donald J. Trump photo

“I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamberger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted by * 2020-04-26

'Hambergers' and 'Noble prizes': Trump attacks press in furious Twitter rant riddled with spelling errors

Alex Woodward

Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-coronavirus-hamburger-nobel-prize-russia-a9485006.html
2020s, 2020, April

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated 'poor white trash.'”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.

Ch. 41
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“By relating an ancient instance of white colonization in a dark subcontinent, it confirmed the colonial worldview.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“Most literary agents are middle class white men who won’t understand what you’ve written unless it’s a slave narrative or someone 'from the streets.'”

They have a moment where they’re like, 'Well, where do I fit in?'…

On the lack of diversity in UK’s publishing world in “'SAFE' Depicts Black British Masculinity in All Its Glory” https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bjqywa/safe-depicts-black-british-masculinity-in-all-its-glory in Vice (2019 Mar 1)

N. K. Jemisin photo

“We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction, occasionally young white women fiction, and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal.”

N. K. Jemisin (1972) American writer

Interviews
Source: On how she once perceived fiction in “NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/02/nk-jemisin-its-easier-to-get-a-book-set-in-black-africa-published-if-youre-white in The Guardian (2020 May 2)

Bobby Sands photo
Paulo Lins photo

“Brazil is a racist country and a racist society…But the funny thing is that nobody will admit to being a racist, and that's the problem. Blacks in Brazil are always in an inferior, subaltern position, but you can't find a white person who is a racist.”

Paulo Lins (1958) Brazilian author

On racism in Brazil in in “THE SATURDAY PROFILE; Out of the Slums of Rio, an Author Finds Fame” https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/world/the-saturday-profile-out-of-the-slums-of-rio-an-author-finds-fame.html in The New York Times (2003 Apr 26)

Antonio Fresco photo

“I got that white girl
No-scrimnate
Chocolate lemon red velvet
I eat all the cake
They outside hating
Cause they can't get in
The whole city's out
We maxed it to ten.”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

Written by Antonio Fresco, Jonn Hart, and Clayton William
Song lyrics, Blow It https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Clayton-William-Jonn-Hart-Antonio-Fresco/Blow-It 2015

“Like the rest of them,
will you also examine the white, crystal today
in the haze and mist of slimy yesterday?
Do what you will
but keep it in mind:
the sun has also been accused
of having necked and cuddled the night.”

Parveen Shakir (1952–1994) Pakistani writer and poet

Sessions of Sweet, Silent Thought: translated by Mirza Nehal Ahmad Baig, p. 20
Poetry, Keep it in Mind

Mick Mulvaney photo

“As a right-wing conservative and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, I never expected that the co-worker I would work closest, and best, with at the White House would be a "globalist."”

Mick Mulvaney (1967) Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Gary Cohn is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. Having the chance to collaborate with him will remain one of the highlights of my career in public service.”

6 March 2018 https://twitter.com/OMBPress/status/971171732454129664

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie photo

“"In Nigeria I'm not black…We don't do race in Nigeria. We do ethnicity a lot, but not race. My friends here don't really get it. Some of them sound like white Southerners from 1940. They say, 'Why are black people complaining about race? Racism doesn't exist!'”

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie (1977) Nigerian writer

It's just not a part of their existence."

On how views of race differ in Nigeria than the United States in “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘I Wanted To Claim My Own Name’” https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-novelist-ted-speaker-interview in Vogue (2015 Nov 3)

Marian Wright Edelman photo

“The odds continue to be stacked against children of color who made up nearly three-quarters of all poor children in 2018. With nearly one in four poor, they are more than 2.5 times more likely to be poor than White children.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Ask the Question: When Are We Going to End Child Poverty in America? in The Charleston Chronicle https://www.charlestonchronicle.net/2019/09/23/ask-the-question-when-are-we-going-to-end-child-poverty-in-america/ (23 September 2019)

Carmen Lomas Garza photo

“My parents did not trust…There was a lot of mistrust…There was this skepticism about white people because of what they had gone through. And I didn't associate with any white people except when I got to junior high.”

Carmen Lomas Garza (1948) Mexican-American artist and illustrator

On the racial divides in her household and community in “Oral history interview with Carmen Lomas Garza, 1997 Apr. 10-May 27” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-carmen-lomas-garza-13540#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Rand Paul photo

“It's been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House
Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of liberty.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

3 February 2016 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-suspends-2016-presidential-campaign/story?id=36674666
2016

Lou Dobbs photo
Stokely Carmichael photo
Joyce Kilmer photo
Anna Akhmatova photo
Kathleen Wynne photo

“If you don’t vote, then somebody who looks like me is going to vote, some senior person, older than me, some white person.”

Kathleen Wynne (1953) 25th Premier of Ontario

19 March 2018 Wynne demonizes old, white voters in grasp for votes http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/agar-wynne-demonizes-old-white-voters-in-grasp-for-votes

Mary Church Terrell photo
Joe Biden photo
Guy P. Harrison photo
Guy P. Harrison photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Johnny Chiang photo

“History (white terror in Taiwan) cannot be forgotten. There is no history that cannot be declassified, no truth that cannot be revealed.”

Johnny Chiang (1972) Taiwanese politician

Source: Johnny Chiang (2020) cited in " KMT’s Chiang visits human rights park https://taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/12/11/2003748529" on Taipei Times, 11 December 2020.

“When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

As quoted in "Vine Deloria Jr." by Melissa Lorenz EMuseum @ Minnesota State University, Mankato (2008) https://web.archive.org/web/20080925082716/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/mncultures/vinedeloriajr.htm

Théodore Guérin photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Issa Rae photo
Issa Rae photo

“There was such a dearth of films like that…And the high-school teen movie is a genre that I love. Everything at that age is so heightened and dramatic, and high-school movies capture that so perfectly. But those films are all white, too; there’s no black teen movie genre that exists in the same way.”

Issa Rae (1985) American actress and writer

On how she didn’t see herself represented in the teen film genre in “Issa Rae: ‘I’ve not started writing season four of Insecure yet. We needed a break’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/13/issa-rae-interview-insecure-little in The Guardian (2019 Apr 13)

Elizabeth Martinez photo

“Thinking about racism in terms of just black and white is a further "invisibilization."”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

We have to recognize the commonality of experience of racism among people of color. Sometimes racism is based on skin color or other physical features; it can have added components of culture, language and legal status -- as in the case of people of Mexican descent.…
On racism in "Unite and Overcome!" https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-1997/unite-and-overcome in Teaching Tolerance (Spring 1997)

Elizabeth Martinez photo
Alicia Garza photo
Alicia Garza photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Racism is rare in Brazil. I'm fed up with this mania of always pitting blacks against whites, gays against heterosexuals. People say I'm homophobic, racist, fascist, xenophobic, but I won the election. [...] If I was racist, what would I have done on seeing a black fall into the water? I'd have folded my arms.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In an interview to Luciana Gimenez broadcasted on 7 May 2019. Racism 'rare' in Brazil, says far right Bolsonaro https://www.france24.com/en/20190508-racism-rare-brazil-says-far-right-bolsonaro. France 24 (8 May 2019).
2019