Racism is not a symptom of evil nor is it a symptom of stupidity. It is a symptom of ignorance.
From The Week March 28, 2008
America, Land of the Unfree Derrick Z. Jackson The Boston Globe
What is the “world’s leading prison sate”? asked Derrick Z. Jackson. You might think it is repressive China or Putin’s Russia. But as a recent Pew Center study recently revealed, it’s the U.S., where 2.3 million people – one out of every 100 adult Americans – now languish behind bars. Per Capita, our rate of imprisonment easily exceeds that of Russia, is six times that of China, and seven times that of Germany and France. The primary crime behind this swelling population is not robbery or murder but the sale and possession of drugs. Under draconian laws adopted during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, most of those sentenced to long prison terms are black: One in 15 black men is in jail, compared to one in 106 white males. Yet, in an amazing act of hypocrisy, the State Department last week issued an annual human-rights report that condemned Russia, Burma, and China for arbitrarily imprisoning too many of their citizens. Nations that live in glass prisons shouldn’t throw stones.
“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dachau is left standing because it must be. All the Dachaus -- all the Belsens, all the Buchenwalds, all the Auschwitzes -- all of it. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge...but worst of all, their consciences. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to think about, something to dwell on and remember...not only in the Twilight Zone, but wherever men walk God's Earth.
When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.
Racism is not a symptom of fear. Nor is it a symptom of hatred. It is merely a symptom of ignorance.
History is not going to be kind to liberals. With their mindless programs, they've managed to do to Black Americans what slavery, Reconstruction, and rank racism found impossible: destroy their family and work ethic.
The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
I am a Muslim and . . . my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings, but especially the Afro-American human being, because my religion is a natural religion, and the first law of nature is self-preservation.
At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being.
If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block.
He is racist, he's homophobic, he's xenophobic and he's a sexist. He's the perfect Republican candidate. [California Democratic Party chairman about Pat Buchanan.]
Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
Racism is man's gravest threat to man--the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.
