Racism Quotes by Ibram X. Kendi

“Garrison kept arriving in the same racist place as his enslaving enemies—subhuman Black inferiority.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“most probably consumed the racist ideas, distancing themselves from Black people.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people. I”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists,”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Racists confessing to their crimes is not in their self-interest.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Racist intentions—not policies—became covert after the 1960s.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Frankly speaking, for generations of Americans, racist ideas have been their common sense.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“White people, apparently, were not responsible for their own racist mentalities.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“They all followed Mississippi’s example, instituting race-veiled voting restrictions, from literacy tests to poll taxes, that would purge their voting rolls of…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Enlightenment ideas gave legitimacy to this long-held racist “partiality,” the connection between lightness and Whiteness and reason, on the one hand, and…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“the discrimination was ignored or discounted, and the fiscal habits of Black people were blamed for the growing fiscal inequities and segregation…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Racist ideas always seemed to arrive right on time to dress up the ugly economic and political exploitation of African people. Ironically,”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“With this law in place, White enslavers could now reap financial reward from relations “upon a negro woman.” But they wanted to…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Black Americans were hardly losing any moral or cultural battles. They were being violently and nonviolently defeated in political and economic battles,…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Some “superior” Africans agreed with the collection of ethnocentric steps for Africans, but rejected the racist ladder that deemed them inferior to…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Of course, racist planters could not admit that Black runaways were self-reliant enough to effect their own safety and happiness—to be free.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Stamped from the Beginning presents this new history. It does not use terms like overt and covert, or explicit and implicit to…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“The system's acts are covert, just as the racist ideas of the people are implicit. I could not wrap my head around…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Tocqueville described the vicious cycle of racist ideas, a cycle that made persuading or educating racist ideas away nearly impossible. In “order…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“if there is anything I have learned during my research, it’s that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“One of racism’s harms is the way it falls on the unexceptional Black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“But the statue attracted a middle-aged, brown-haired, overweight White guy. Clearly drunk, he climbed onto the tiny stage and started fondling Buddha…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“I know that readers truly committed to racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding our racist ideas.…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“A group we can call segregationists has blamed Black people themselves for the racial disparities. A group we can call antiracists has…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“I thought I had it all figured out. I thought of racism as an inanimate, immortal system, not as a living, recognizable,…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“But for all of that life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn’t lessen its force. We are what we see ourselves…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“With every Black first, the blame shifted to those Black people who failed to break away. Du Bois’s The Crisis tried to…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“All these self-serving efforts by powerful factions to define their racist rhetoric as nonracist has left Americans thoroughly divided over, and ignorant…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“When you truly believe that the racial groups are equal, then you also believe that racial disparities must be the result of…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Black behavior—not the wrenching housing and economic discrimination—was blamed for these impoverished Black enclaves.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“assimilationists constantly encourage Black adoption of White cultural traits and/or physical ideals.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Prejudice “will cease,” Kelsey wrote, “when the blacks can command the respect and sympathy of the whites.”26 In”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“intersectionality”—prejudice stemming from the intersections of racist ideas and other forms of bigotry, such as sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, and homophobia.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“From the beginning, it has been a three-sided battle, a battle of antiracist ideas being pitted against two kinds of racist ideas…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Racist policies forcing free Blacks into menial jobs were being defended by racist claims that lazy and unskilled Black people were best…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“wrapping their ideas in goodness, segregationists and assimilationists have rarely confessed to their racist public policies and ideas.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“This is the consistent function of racist ideas—and of any kind of bigotry more broadly: to manipulate us into seeing people as…

— Ibram X. Kendi