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Friday 27th of March 2026

2008 financial crisis Compared with whites, minorities absorbed heavier losses in the housing collapse. From 2005 to 2009, “inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared  with just 16% among white households.” From 1984 to 2009, the wealth gap between whites and blacks nearly tripled, and in 2009, about a third of both black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative worth, compared with 15% of white households. Ronald P. Formisano, Plutocracy in America, quoting from a Pew Research Center study  © 2017 Kwiple.com
2016 Presidential election Were you paid $1,500 to be a thug? Donald Trump, to a black rallier seated near the podium who he ordered to be removed without realizing the man was a supporter who sat up front so he could give Trump a note saying he'd get more black votes if he showed blacks more respect © 2019 Kwiple.com
Blacks The American commonwealth chooses to overlook what Negroes are never able to forget: they are not really  considered a part of it. Like Aziz in A Passage to India or Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, they know that white people, whatever their love of justice, do not love them. James Baldwin, “Journey to Atlanta” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Blacks And then I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Blacks A black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac. James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket © 2017 Kwiple.com
Blacks You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time   © 2017 Kwiple.com
Blacks You can't leave me with these people. Donald Trump to Omarosa, who had accompanied him to a black church in Detroit in an effort to win black voters © 2018 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say Target stands with our Black team members, guests and families. A spokesman for Target, which blocks its online ads from appearing with stories about  Black Lives Matter and George Floyd's murder [Quoted by Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2020] © 2020 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage of black Americans earning less than $25,000 a year who say they have been called a racial slur: 40 Of black Americans earning more than $75,000: 65 Harper's Index, January 2018 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Projected year in which the median net worth of black Americans will be $0: 2053 Harper's Index, December 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Ratio of the number of statues of African Americans to those of Confederates in the U.S. Capitol: 4:11 Harper's Index, November 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Christianity He began with a quotation to the effect that, when the Christian arrived in Africa, he had the Bible and the African had the land; but that, before long, the African had the Bible and the Christian had the land. James Baldwin, quoting a Jamaican priest, “Princes and Powers” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Christianity The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. Malcolm X, in Autobiography of Malcolm X  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Cities Urban renewal means Negro removel. James Baldwin © 2019 Kwiple.com
Civil rights Integration had won African Americans  the opportunity to eat at any restaurant. Only equality could ensure that they would be able to pay the bill. Gary Younge, Stranger in a Strange Land  © 2017 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The country, it turned out, was experiencing wildly different pandemics. For every ten thousand Americans, there were thirty-eight coronavirus cases. But, for whites, the number was twenty-three; for Blacks, it was sixty-two; for Hispanics, it was seventy-three. Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, January 4 & 11, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Death Mortality rates in recent years have been increasing for all whites, in contrast to decreases in the rest of the world. At the same time, it is worth noting that mortality rates for African Americans remain higher than for whites. Adverse economics is bad for health, regardless of race. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Democracy Cause everything that hitler And mussolini do, Negroes get the same Treatment from you. You jim crowed me Before hitler rose to power — And you're STILL jim crowing me Right now, this very hour. You say we're fighting For democracy. Then why don't democracy Include me? from “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943” by Langston Hughes, addressing America during World War II © 2017 Kwiple.com
Fascism Fascism is a new name for the kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America. This kind of terrorism is extending more and more to groups of people whose skins are not Black. Langston Hughes, 1936 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Guns When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles or the Irish or any white man in the world says, “Give me liberty or give me death,” the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigger so there won't be any more like him. James Baldwin, The Dick Cavett Show, 1968 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Hatred The Negro, facing a Jew, hates, at bottom, not his Jewishness but the color of his skin. It is not the Jewish tradition by which he has been betrayed but the tradition of his native land. But just as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew. James Baldwin, “The Harlem Ghetto” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Housing During the boom years, IndyMac charged high interest rates (defined by the government as more than 3 percentage points above prime) to 24 percent of its white borrowers, but 36 percent of Hispanics and 43 percent of African Americans. Aaron Glantz, Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream © 2020 Kwiple.com
Justice I feel so relieved. I feel relieved. I don't see how it could have been otherwise, but I do know that it could have been otherwise. As an African-American women, I am glad that I have lived to see this in my lifetime. I never thought I would live to see it, and I'm 91 years old. Woman interviewed by Shomari Stone of NBC News after the announcement that a  white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, had been convicted on all counts of murdering George Floyd, a black man © 2021 Kwiple.com
Justice A measure of justice isn't the same as equal justice. Kamala Harris, commenting on the conviction of white Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin on all three counts related to his May 25, 2020, nine-minute-and-twenty-nine-second knee-on-the-neck murder in public of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man pinned face down on the street against the tire of a police cruiser  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Justice That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise. Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes. “Justice” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Hypocrites say Voter ID laws don't suppress voting by minorities and the poor © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In 2018, the median household income for a black family was $41,361, having grown 3.4 per cent over the previous decade, according to the latest US Census Bureau data. This compared with a median income $70,642 for non-Hispanic whites which had grown 8.8 per cent since the 2008 crisis. Financial Times, June 4, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Leadership roles In total, there are just four black chief executives among the 500 largest companies in the country. New York Times, June 6, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary yanezthetize (yə nez thə tīz), v. To authorize a white dressed in blue to kill a black. Memorializes Jeronimo Yanez, the St. Anthony, Minnesota, cop who panicked during a traffic stop, was live-streamed on Facebook from inside Philando Castile's car and caught on a police dashcam video as he shot Castile seven times, claimed he felt threatened when Castile followed his orders, lied about what he saw in court, and was acquitted of all charges. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lotteries  Many white voters, [Jonathan] Cohen writes [in For a Dollar and a Dream ], supported legalization because they thought state-run gambling would primarily attract Black numbers players, who would then foot the bill for services that those white voters didn't  want to pay for anyway, such as better schools in the urban areas they had lately fled.  (In reality, the oft-repeated claim that legalizing the lottery would merely decriminalize current gamblers rather than create new ones of all races proved dramatically wrong.) Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, October 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Millennials The St Louis Fed estimates as many as 16 per cent of US millennials do not have the immediate means to cover an emergency expense of $400. For black millennials in particular, that figure rises to 32 per cent. Financial Times, July 9, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Political power Whites have feared the political power of people of color more so than voters of color have recognized their power. Gilda R. Daniels, Uncounted  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Poverty Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences – radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual. The differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome. Lyndon Johnson, 1963, Howard University Commencement Address © 2017 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 The root of the white man's hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. But the root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply wants them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way. James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Racial inequality Malcolm X's vision of black politics, centered on putting community issues first, has collapsed under the weight of the Democratic Party's general uneasiness about tackling racial inequality and under the guidance of a race-neutral black president who distances himself from issues and policies targeted at eradicating racial inequality. Fredrick C. Harris, The Price of the Ticket   © 2016 Kwiple.com
Racists say The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans. Mitch McConnell, January 19, 2022, wrong both factually, especially when rates of voting among blacks are compared to rates among whites, and for denying that voting laws recently passed by Republican state legislatures were neither intended to nor will they have the effect of suppresing voting by minorities  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Reading According to a  2022 Department of Education assessment, 67 percent of American fourth graders are not proficient readers. “The problem is even worse when you look beyond the average and focus on specific groups of children,” [Emily] Hanford  [creator of the “Sold a Story” podcast] says. “The most alarming statistic: 82 percent of Black fourth graders are not proficient readers.” Some of these children will never get the help they need. ProPublica recently reported that one fifth of adults in the United States struggle with reading — a “silent literacy crisis.” Christine Smallwood, New York Review of Books, February 9, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Republican Party The party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln. George W. Bush, at the NAACP 2000 national convention © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Allowing – even encouraging – lenders to charge Blacks and Latinos higher interest rates for car loans is change we believe in © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Blacks? We don't need no blacks! © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Reparations for Cuban refugees, none for American Indians or Blacks © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Whatever it takes, suppress the black vote, now and forever © 2016 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Black lives matter Slogan on posters, caps, t-shirts, etc. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I have a deep-seated fear that the Black struggle will ultimately, at its root, really just be about narrow Black interest. And I don’t think that is in the tradition of what our most celebrated thinkers have told the world. … Should it turn out that we have our first Black woman president, and our first South Asian president, and we continue to export 2,000-pound bombs to perpetrate a genocide [against Palestinians], in defense of a state [Israel] that is practicing apartheid, I won’t be able to just sit here and shake my head and say, “Well, that is unfortunate.” Ta-Nahesi Coats, New York Magazine, Sep 23 – Oct 6, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Selfie I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money. Rick Santorum © 2015 Kwiple.com
Selfie I've said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage. Donald Trump © 2015 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley In 2018, venture capital groups employed 18 black investing partners, representing less than 2 per cent of the industry’s total, according to data compiled by Richard Kerby at Equal Ventures. Even fewer were Latinx, or of Latin American descent. Sequoia Capital, widely viewed as Silicon Valley's marquee venture firm, does not count a single black partner among its ranks. Financial Times, June 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Slavery Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot. Frederick Douglass © 2019 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Blacks are responsible for their oppression © 2018 Kwiple.com
Small business A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black-owned businesses in the US have been dispropor-  tionately impacted by lockdowns and changes in consumer behaviour during the pandemic. The overall number of active business owners in the US fell 15 per cent between February and May 2020, but African-American business owners suffered a 26 per cent drop, while those controlled by Latinx owners fell 19 per cent, according to the report. After the 2008 financial crisis, fewer than 50 per cent of black-owned businesses sur- vived compared to 60 percent for white- owned businesses, according to a recent study from the Brookings Institute … Financial Times, August 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. Bill Clinton portrayed by Toni Morrison © 2015 Kwiple.com
Social mobility When white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself by his own bootstraps, they don't look at the legacy of slavery and segregation. I believe we ought to do all we can, and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, but it's a cruel gesture to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And many Negroes, by the thousands and millions, have been left bootless as a result of all these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading. Martin Luther King, Jr. © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union The nation is moving toward two societies, one white, one black – separate and unequal. The Kerner Report: The 1968 Report of the NationalAdvisory Commisson on Civil Disorders © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tax audits What county in the United States has the highest rate of tax audits? The answer is Humphreys County in rural Mississippi, where three-quarters of the population is Black and more than one third lives below the poverty line, according to ProPublica and Tax Notes. Tax collectors go after Humphreys County, where the median annual household income is $28,500, because the government targets audits on poor families using the earned- income tax credit, an antipvoerty program, rather than on real estate tycoons who pay their daughters (that's you, Ivanka!) questionable consulting fees. Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Oct. 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say As you know, I've been  identifying as black for a while, years now, because I like to be on the winning team. Scott Adams © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Blacks hate Mexicans … Mexicans move in and shoot black people, the jobs have been taken. Anything he says about Mexicans, his vote goes up with the brothers. Ann Coulter, on Trump's attack on a Mexican-American judge © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish. Betsy DeVos © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can't be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also Kanye West, a.k.a Ye a.k.a Yeezus a.k.a. Louis Vuitton Don a.k.a. Yeezy a.k.a. Saint Pablo a.k.a. Christian Billionaire Genius, 3:55 AM – Oct 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story. Crystal Clanton, former field director for Turning Point USA,  former housemate of Ginni and Clarence Thomas, and recently selected by him to be one of his law clerks, saying of her, “I know bigotry. Bigotry is antithetical to her nature.“ © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I have worked with President Trump for two years and he is not a racist. He is a compassionate man whose policies have focused on the minority community. He is a results-oriented president who is focused on helping uplift all Americans, including blacks, including Hispanics. Mercedes Schlapp, July, 2019, Trump 2020 campaign advisor  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I would say,  based on the current way things are going,  the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. … It makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen to try to help black citizens anymore. It doesn't make sense. Scott Adams © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say [W]e demand, we absolutely demand that the criminals, the criminals in this country, if you want them held accountable, the criminals are Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Susan Rice, this entire criminal cabal that came about as a result of the murder of  John F. Kennedy, the people that perpetrated  the murder of John F. Kennedy, rise up to that. Military, join us and put all of them up against a concrete wall, just like [Romanian dictator Nicolae] Ceaușescu, and do what we must do to save not just our country, the entire world. Pete Santilli, on what to do if Trump is arrested or indicted by New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who, like Obama, Holder, and Rice, is black © 2023 Kwiple.com
Violence By rich-world standards, America is a staggeringly violent country. The murder rate is six times higher than it is in Britain, France or Germany and 20 times higher than in Japan. In 2020, one in 700 black men aged 18 to 24 was murdered. Violence is now not only cutting short the lives of over 24,000 people per year. It is also devastating entire communities, as businesses and middle-class people leave crime-ridden neighborhoods. Plausible estimates put the social cost of murder at over $400bn per year, around 2% of America's GDP. The Economist, September 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Voter ID laws Of the eleven states with the highest black turnout in 2008, seven adopted stricter voter ID laws, and of the twelve states that experienced the highest rates of Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2010, nine passed laws making it harder to vote. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Voting rights c) the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- ments to the Constitution are regarded by much of the South as inorganic accretions to the original document, grafted upon it by victors-at-war by force; that d) the South should, if it determines to disfranchise the marginal Negro, do so by enacting laws that apply equally to blacks and whites, thus living up to the spirit of the Constitution, and the letter of the Fifteenth Amendment to it. William F. Buckley, Jr., “A Clarification,” National Review, September 7, 1957  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Economic disparities are also growing by race. In 1963, median family wealth was $43,000 higher for whites than for African Americans. By 2013, it was $123,000 higher (and $120,000 higher than for Hispanics, for whom there isn't data from 1963). Even in the few years since the financial crash, wealth inequality has grown along racial lines. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent of American households hold close to the same amount of wealth. That's one of the statistics most frequently cited to describe the problem of economic inequality in the United States today. Here are some others: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent — 135 million people — are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero. New York Times, July 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality With black individuals deeply underrepresented in Silicon Valley and largely absent at the highest levels of major corporations, little of the wealth created in the stock market or the technology boom has gone to black families. Today, typical black households have just one-tenth the wealth of typical white households, according to Federal Reserve data. New York Times, June 6, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com