Top 1200 Racial Tension Quotes & Sayings

So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.

By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.

Tension means hurry, fear, doubt. Tension means a constant effort to protect, to be secure, to be safe. Tension means preparing for the tomorrow now, or for the afterlife - afraid tomorrow you will not be able to face the reality, so be prepared. Tension means the past that you have not lived really but only somehow bypassed; it hangs, it is a hangover, it surrounds you.

A good joke provides tension, and then, release of that tension. You build the tension by saying things that are controversial. The release is the laugh. The bigger the surprise or insight in your joke, the bigger the laugh.

But it all came, and for me, hip-hop has done more for racial divide and racial sort of bringing together than anything in the last 30 years. Seeing people like Eminem sounding like somebody like Jay-Z and just the racial aspects of it all.

The difference with Cleveland is that the racial tension was not a casual taste of it. It was outlandish.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

It is quite typical for Democrats and other political groups to incite or exploit racial hatred, prejudice, or tension for political gain around the time of elections.

We listened to Donald Trump speak at the debate about 'Stop and Frisk.' I don't think it's a good way to go through life. I don't think that's going to solve any of our problems. It's actually going to make racial tension a whole lot worse, and it's going to make us feel like we're singled out.

My inner world seems largely to consist of three rotating emotions: embarrassment, rage, and tension. Sometimes I feel excited, but I think that's just positive tension.

For me it's about creating and sustaining tension for as long as possible, and I'm not generally interested in allowing that tension to be deflated, especially by a jump scare.

I think I was just too young to even understand what was going on. When I was still living in South Africa, there was still so much racial tension.

'Crash' is a movie about the racial tension that still exists in America. A lot of us pretend that we don't have preconceived notions and stereotypical ideals about each other, but we do. And we wanted to create a movie about people whose lives crash into each others' accidentally.

I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it's consummated, the tension's over.

The truth is that much of the plastic surgery we see today has a racial or ethnic component because it has to do with inherently racial concepts of physical perfection, like the 'Roman nose.'

The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.

We've all been acculturated into accepting the inevitability of wrongful convictions, unfair sentences, racial bias, and racial disparities and discrimination against the poor.

Racial relations in this country are plummeting. Racial strife is rising. All the while, Obama is out there talking about unity and bringing us together.

Almost everyone seems concerned with the need to relax tension. However, relaxation of tension, which everyone thinks is good, is not easily distinguished from relaxing ones guard, which almost everyone thinks is bad. Relaxation, like Miltown, is not an end in itself. Not all danger comes from tension. The reverse relation, to be tense where there is danger, is only rational.

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension working strength is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces.

My fight is not for racial sameness but for racial equality and against racial prejudice and discrimination.

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

With so much racial tension and issues between the police and black and minority ethnic groups, there needs to be more in-depth conversations if we're going to fix anything.

Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.

One of the interesting things about comedy is it's tension release, and nothing creates tension faster than anger.

The criminal-justice system is, obviously, the sole source of racial tension in this country [USA] or the key institution to resolving the opportunity gap. It is a part of the broader set of challenges that we face in creating a more perfect union.

Most poor people in America are white. The family breakdown issue is an issue that crosses all sorts of racial lines. High school dropout issues. But because of the flow of events which involve the racial component, we've sometimes confused racial issues with other issues which are trans-racial.

There are interesting tensions that will naturally occur with any relationship. No matter what setting, what era, the tension is very, very real. It's basic human tension.

I have nothing but the best memories of growing up in New Jersey. Of course, I grew up in a nice town, a suburb. But Tenafly was right next to Englewood, which had a tremendous amount of racial tension in the '60s. So I was aware of the real world.

Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world. Black children today are hammered with the idea of racial identity and pride, yet racial pride in whites constitutes a grave evil.

Racial problems can't be easily reconciled with a pat account about racism and discrimination that lets us sort of relax into saying when we finally get this right, when we get rid of racism, when we reach the post-racial society, everything is going to be okay. Well, no, because along the way here, as we've not yet been in this racial nirvana, facts on the ground have been created.

... While nervous tension may be a component of stress, one can be stressed without feeling tension.

Sometimes, from outside, and from America especially, where the racial tension is so intense, you tend to understand Brazil as a kind of ideal situation, but it's not. There are a lot of problems. Historically, we have been in struggle, in real struggle to protect and defend the natural leaning towards absorbing the African and the Indian heritage that our society has.

Tension happens. It will continue to happen. If we didn't have tension, we wouldn't be alive. How we maintenance ourselves makes all the difference in how we live our lives.

Crying, that is, sobbing is the earliest and deepest way to release tension. Infants can cry almost from the moment of birth, and do so easily following every stress that produces a state of tension in the body... Human beings are the only creatures who can react in this way to stress and tension. Most probably, they are the only ones who need this form of release.

Judaism is not a religion. At best, it is a racial credo, designed to maintain racial cohesion, in this case the Khazar bloodlines.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn't be able to do that.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to racial prejudice and the personal actions that result. But this definition does little to explain how racial hierarchies are consistently reproduced.

The most interesting characters are those you're drawn to, then repelled by, and then come to understand. All that tension - I live that. But I don't plan the tension. It's just something that should happen.

Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.

Our communities are being destroyed by racial tension - and we're too polite to talk about it.

Believing that no one is better than the other. You know I grew up in the South. My senior year there was a very big racial tension.

As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here, because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth.

There is more racial integration in American life and many more people of color serving as elected officials and corporate leaders than there were during my father's time. But there is also reason for concern about new forms of racial oppression, such as measures to make it harder to vote, racial profiling and crushing public worker unions.

I think the O.J. Simpson case conjured all the paranoia, the racial anxiety, but also the racial fatigue that America has endured over the last half century.

I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It's the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what's going to happen three hours from now.

In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French, and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal.

I want tension in my business. Tension creates change. Change is necessary to evolve and prosper. I am never satisfied.

Lynching is an important aspect of racial history and racial inequality in America, because it was visible, it was so public, it was so dramatic, and it was so violent.

The 'Moonlighting' tension of the couple that obviously never can get together, there's an innate sort of fun and tension in that.

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress.

I believe when you bring, say, a plant into a room, everything in that room changes in relation to it. This tension - tension is the only word for it - can be painted.

The media role in highlighting racial incidents only serves to exacerbate tension. We rarely write about racial harmony.

Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing.

If comedy is about surprises, about tension, there's a lot of tension and surprise there, in the fact that people are expecting this to be natural.

Tension is all about, 'Why is this taking so long?' The interesting thing about that is that it's also the tension of comedy. The tension of drama and comedy is similar, and that's why usually you can get a big laugh in a really tense moment because people need that release.

The racial categories that are used in a given society (for example, in contemporary America) are biologically meaningless, but sometimes it turns out that a vernacular racial category has biological reality.