Slavery Quotes by Ibram X. Kendi

“When men oppress their fellowmen, the oppressor ever finds, in the character of the oppressed, a full justification for his oppression.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

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

— 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 between darkness…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.”

— 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 at the…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“newspaper reports of rape constructed white defendants as individual offenders and black defendants as representative of the failings of their racial group,”

— Ibram X. Kendi

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

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Donald Trump’s economic policies are geared toward enriching White male power—but at the expense of most of his White male followers, along with the…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“individualizing White negativity and generalizing Black negativity.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Racially discriminatory policies have usually sprung from economic, political, and cultural self-interests, self-interests that are constantly changing. Politicians seeking higher office have primarily created…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“The vicious housing cycle had already begun. Racist policies harmed Black neighborhoods, generating racist ideas that caused people not to want to live next…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“For Jefferson, power came before freedom. Indeed, power creates freedom, not the other way around—as the powerless are taught.”

— Ibram X. Kendi

“To justify Black enslavement, Barbados planters actually “preferred” the polygenesis theory over the curse theory of Ham,”

— 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 prevent the…

— Ibram X. Kendi

“Our education has filled us with strong prejudices against them,” Hopkins professed, “and led us to consider them, not as our brethren, or in…

— Ibram X. Kendi