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Race

Thursday 25th of April 2024

Race After four years in the US, on both coasts, the sharpest relief since coming home [to Britain] has been the chance to have sustained conversations that do not in some way come back to identity. This is the difference between diversity and cosmopolitanism. The first is a physical fact. The second is an attitude towards it: a sort of insouciance. New York is diverse. London, where people one generation removed from Ireland or Italy won’t think to mention it, is cosmopolitan. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, September 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Race After my election there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. Barack Obama © 2017 Kwiple.com
Race But race is the child of racism, not the father.  … Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me © 2016 Kwiple.com
Race I can't name a single issue with roots in race that doesn't have economic implications, and I cannot think of a single economic issue that doesn't have racial implications. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez © 2020 Kwiple.com
Race Imagine that you are about to be born, not knowing your race.  Where would you choose to make your life? Where will give you a fair crack, without boxing you in to round-the-clock  consciousness of matters of blood and soil? Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, September 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Race A man become as rich as he wants to, he is still a Negro. Or a man may sink as low as it is possible to sink in terms of the mores of society, but he will still be white. Peter L. Berger, An Invitation to Sociology © 2020 Kwiple.com
Race The Marines don't have any race problems. They treat everybody like they're black.  attributed to Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., America's first black four-star general  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Race My old man's a white old man And my old mother's black. If ever I cursed my white old man I take my curses back. If ever I cursed my black old mother And wished she were in hell, I'm sorry for that evil wish And now I wish her well. My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I'm gonna die, Being neither white nor black? “Cross” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Race Once riding in old Baltimore Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Kept looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’ I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that hapened there That's all that I remember. “Incident” by Countee Cullen © 2017 Kwiple.com
Race The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’ Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a 1970 memo to President Nixon © 2015 Kwiple.com
Race What happens if you spend decades focused on appealing to white voters and treating nonwhite voters with, at best, benign neglect? You get good at doing what it takes to appeal to white voters. That is the truth that led to what is famously called “the southern strategy.” That is the path that leads you to becoming what the Republican Party now proudly embraces: a white grievance party. Stuart Stevens, It Was All a Lie © 2020 Kwiple.com
Race “Where are you from?” “London.” “Well where were you born?” “London.” “Well, before then?” “There was no before then!” “Well, where are your parents from?” “Barbados.” “Oh, so you're from Barbados.” “No, I'm from London.” Gary Younge, a black Briton, recounting a “typical conversation” in England, in Stranger in a Strange Land  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Race Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better? The garbage wasn't picked up every motherfuckin' day when I was living in 165 Washington Park. The police weren't around. When you see white mothers pushing their babies in strollers, three o'clock in the morning on 125th Street, that must tell you something. Spike Lee © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Race and class It is clear that the social location of an individual as a Negro … implies a far narrower channeling of existential possibilities than happens by way of class. Indeed, the individual's possibilities of class mobility are most definitely determined by his social location, since some of the most stringent disabilities of the latter are economic in character. Thus a man's conduct, ideas and psychological identity are shaped by race in a manner far more decisive than they commonly are by class. Peter L. Berger, An Invitation to Sociology © 2020 Kwiple.com