A Quote by Shelby Steele

If you're getting harassed, it's not helpful to know that racism has generally declined in America, when you're still experiencing it. That is a reality that we're still vulnerable to.

Shelby Steele

Quote Topics

America Experiencing Generally Getting Helpful Know Racism Reality Still Vulnerable

Quote Author

Shelby Steele
American - Author
Born: January 1, 1946

There are still many homeless trans folk wandering the streets. They are still harassed on the street by bystanders and police officers. We still face many administrative hurdles in every aspect of our lives. If anything, things are actually getting harder for us, because now there are people who are using our visibility as an excuse to say that we are already receiving fair and honest treatment, when the reality is that we are still in bad shape as a community.

Chelsea Manning

Part of our identity is the idea that racism is still there and that we are vulnerable to it. So, the question is, 'How vulnerable?' In other words, is it really a problem for us, or is it just a small thing. How do you evaluate racism in America on a scale of 1 to 10? My suspicion is that most blacks overrate it a bit. Not to say it's not there, but we overrate it because this masking is part of our relationship to the larger society. This is a way we keep whites on the hook. We keep them obligated, and we keep ourselves entitled. There's an incentive, you see, to inflate it a little bit.

Shelby Steele

I think America the symbol and America the notion are still very different from America the nation. What's touching and almost regenerative is that whatever is happening in the reality of America, where there is a murder rate worse than Lebanon's and where there is so much homelessness and poverty, still America will be a shorthand throughout the world for everything that is young and modern and free.

Pico Iyer

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

Charlie Pierce

I'm still growing, still learning. I'm still open and vulnerable enough to know there's much more to be taught to me and learned by me. I hope I don't reach my pinnacle on this earth where I think I know it all.

Savion Glover

Jim Crow laws stripped blacks of basic rights. Despite landmark civil rights laws, many public schools were still segregated, blacks still faced barriers to voting, and violence by white racists continued. Such open racism is mostly gone in America, but covert racism is alive and well.

Bob Beckel

I still have a lot of family in America. I still have a lot of friends there. There is a lot that I admire there very much. When I find America getting too much criticized outside America, I want to tell them how many things are good about it.

Jane Jacobs

America still has a race problem, though not the one that conventional wisdom would suggest: the racism of whites toward blacks. Old fashioned white racism has lost its legitimacy in the world and become an almost universal disgrace.

Shelby Steele

For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President.

Howard Zinn

My mom experienced racism. She was harassed by the KKK several times. And I experienced racism myself, growing up. In New Jersey, we had trash thrown on our lawn every day. And we had the lines to our Christmas lights cut three years in a row. We just stopped putting up Christmas lights after that. That's probably why I still don't put up any lights during the holidays.

Aldis Hodge

Racism is still America's greatest addiction. I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God.

Michael Pfleger

Of course, I came up around music and fame, but this is still my first time experiencing it all. I'm still going through it like anybody else goes through it. But I'm still doing something I've never done before.

Jakob Dylan

When a black man is stopped by a cop for no apparent reason, that is covert racism. When a black woman shops in a fancy store and is followed by security guards, that is covert racism. It is more subtle than 1960s racism, but it is still racism.

Bob Beckel

To me, what I define as defiance, in some ways, is knowing the "reality" and having the ability to possess a realist mindstate yet still working towards the fantasy and still being childish. While still having the understanding and capacity that would generally inspire pessimism: some sort of more realist perspective that I think most people classify as adult. Anything like that and anything that's sort of fun.

Alex Ebert

You write these vulnerable songs as a sort of therapy, but if you don't confront people on a daily basis, it's not reality. There's still a bit of separation there.