A Quote by Shelby Steele

One drop of black blood and you're black. That was the rule. That's what kept the wall between whites and blacks was this one drop rule. So I was raised with absolutely no ambiguity about that.

Shelby Steele

Quote Topics

About Absolutely Ambiguity Between Black Blacks Blood Drop Kept Raised Rule Wall Whites

Quote Author

Shelby Steele
American - Author
Born: January 1, 1946

Many people believe that determining who is 'black' is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as 'black.'

Randall Kennedy

There's a thing called the 'One Drop' theory in African-American culture, which is if you have one drop of black blood in you, you're black.

Keegan-Michael Key

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

Langston Hughes

Black racism is a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings. As long as whites can be assured that blacks are racists, they can find reasons to justify their own oppression of’ black people.

James H. Cone

I have spent my whole life earnestly believing the fundamental American dictum that a single 'drop of black blood' makes a person 'black' primarily because they can never be 'white.'

Thomas Chatterton Williams

The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.

Ben Aaronovitch

Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film.

Melvin Van Peebles

Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.

Thomas Sowell

One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk.

Alice Munro

We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.

Christopher Lasch

Normally, 'black responsibility' is a forbidden phrase for a black leader -- not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites.

Shelby Steele

I'm in no position to hand down any advice," he said, "but there's a rule I follow when I don't know what to do." "A rule?" "If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it's hard going at the time.

Haruki Murakami

Black Lives Matter is the ultimate divisive movement. They aren't shy about what they don't like, which is western civilization, capitalism, and the rule of law. They really dislike the police, and certainly get the credit for the war between black men and police.

Milo Yiannopoulos

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.