{"quotes":[{"text":"Jeb'd said it was harder for a pretty girl to find work; even white men liked flowers, whether red or pink or blue.","author":"Shannon Celebi","tags":["abolition","abolitionist","flowers","pretty-girl","pretty-girls","race-relations","racism","slavery"],"id":279,"author_id":"Shannon+Celebi"},{"text":"It began to strike me that the point of my education was a kind of discomfort, was the process that would not award me my own especial Dream but would break all the dreams, all the comforting myths of Africa, of America, and everywhere, and would leave me only with humanity in all its terribleness. And there was so much terrible out there, even among us. You must understand this.","author":"Ta-Nehisi Coates","tags":["african-americans","blacks","discomfort","education","learning","race-relations","racism"],"id":356,"author_id":"Ta-Nehisi+Coates"},{"text":"This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.","author":"Paul Robeson","tags":["african-americans","america","equal-rights","fighting","injustice","race","race-relations","truth"],"id":2568,"author_id":"Paul+Robeson"},{"text":"You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you're going to write about race, you have to make sure it's so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn't read between the lines won't even know it's about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.'Or just find a white writer. White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn't threatening.","author":"Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie","tags":["funny","literature-about-literature","race","race-in-america","race-relations"],"id":11245,"author_id":"Chimamanda+Ngozi+Adichie"},{"text":"The power structure understands that Black folks have been hungry for so long, fixing us a plate now that's the same size as theirs would do nothing for our hunger. After all, they're pretty full and fat.They know we now require a much bigger plate than theirs to quiet the stomach rumblings.They see us and know what it looks like to be less powerful. They are fighting to never FEEL it.","author":"Darnell Lamont Walker","tags":["african-americans","black-people","equality","government","power","race-relations","racism","systematic-racism"],"id":13107,"author_id":"Darnell+Lamont+Walker"},{"text":"We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. 'No lie can live forever.' We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. 'Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.'   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  'You shall reap what you sow.' With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, 'Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.","author":"Martin Luther King Jr.","tags":["america","civil-rights","freedom","hope","justice","love","race-relations","racism","united-states","united-states-of-america","us","usa"],"id":13473,"author_id":"Martin+Luther+King+Jr."},{"text":"The meetings and marches and vigils are cool, but if the enemy isn't present, you're just talking slick to a can of oil.","author":"Darnell Lamont Walker","tags":["america","discourse","discussion","meetings","race-relations","racism"],"id":15114,"author_id":"Darnell+Lamont+Walker"},{"text":"You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes, neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We can only regret it, and flee from it, and from henceforth, let peace and righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever.","author":"William Apess","tags":["history","native-american","race-relations"],"id":19218,"author_id":"William+Apess"},{"text":"I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.","author":"Paul Beatty","tags":["african-americans","blacks","guilt","incarceration","innocence","jail","justice","justice-system","prison","race-relations"],"id":25037,"author_id":"Paul+Beatty"},{"text":"Holocaust survivors and their descendants are supposed to hate those who oppressed and killed them and their people. Black people are not. This is how anti-blackness works.","author":"Darnell Lamont Walker","tags":["african-americans","anti-blackness","black-people","hate","hatred","hitler","holocaust","nazi","race","race-relations","racism"],"id":25580,"author_id":"Darnell+Lamont+Walker"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":158,"pages":16,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}