Race is a term used to distinguish one population of an animal species (including human) from another of the same subspecies. The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits, especially skin color and facial features), genes, and self-identification. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and time and are often controversial due to their impact on social identity and identity politics, and many regard race as a social construct. Legal definitions, common usage, and scientific meaning can all be confounded, and care must be taken to note the context in which it is used.

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• "The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart."
  • Barack Hussein Obama, Dreams from My Father, Three Rivers Press, 1995.

• "You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it is our turn."
  • Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (in a conversation with Justice William Douglas about racial preferences), William O. Douglas, The Court Years 1939-1975, New York, Random House, 1980.

• "If you're a real American that is, an American Indian you're lucky to be alive. For whether he really believed it or not, the white man has acted on the principle that "The only good Indian is a dead one". This was certainly one of the foundation stones upon which the white European invaders of North America and their descendants established and built the republic of the U.S.A."
  • Stetson Kennedy , Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, Ch.1 - No Room For Redskins, 1955

• "Most of the American laws defining race are not to be compared with those once enforced by Nazi Germany, the latter being relatively more liberal. In the view of the Nazis, persons having less than one fourth Jewish blood could qualify as Aryans, whereas many of the American laws specify that persons having one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or any ascertainable" Negro blood are Negroes in the eyes of the law and subject to all restrictions governing the conduct of Negroes."
  • Stetson Kennedy , Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, Ch.4 - Who is Colored Where , 1955

• "Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian."
• "The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact."
• "You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiog- nomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes."
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, French philospoher, a pioneer of liberalism
  • Source: Democracy in America, Part I, Chapter XVIII, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch18.htm

• We could all take a lesson from crayons,
  Some are bright, some are dull, some beautiful,
  Some ugly, and some have weird names,
  As different as they are,
  They all have to live in the same box ...
  • Kriston Morell, car crash victim
  • Alabama Public Safety Fatality Victims Memorial

• Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. ~ Mark Twain

• You have to look beyond race because as a human being you have to experience the person from the inside first.
  • Henrik Larsson, soccer player http://www.theredcard.ie/news/2006_03_01_archive.html

• I have spoken all over the world an I have great respect for Muslims, I have great respect for the African people, I have respect for the other races. Even back home in Lousiana, I'm called a racist, but I have respect for the Black people of my country and I want them to have their own life, too, and I want them to be able to pursue their own destiny and not be controlled, and not be damaged.
  • Dr. David Duke, american politician and activist, http://www.davidduke.com/mp3/dukeradio060825.mp3

• Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games.
  • University of Pennsylvania Wharton School assistant professor Justin Wolfers, on the results of a statistical study conducted by him and Cornell University graduate student Joseph Price of possible racial bias in calling fouls in the NBA (Source: New York Times, 2 May 2007)

• Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist. The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
  • Ron Paul, Government and Racism, April 16, 2007 http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst041607.htm

• Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
  • Ayn Rand

• "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people."
  • Sister Souljah (rap artist and black activist)m, R.W. Apple “Jackson Sees ‘Character Flaw’ in Clinton’s Remarks on Racism, New York Times, June 19, 1992.

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• ...I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
  • Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates

• All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.
  • Jesse Helms

• If You can judge a Wise Man by the Color of His Skin,Mister You're a better Man than I
  • The Yardbirds

• If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.
  • Miles Davis, Jet, March 25, 1985

• Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
  • Bertrand Russell

• I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day...This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be.
  • Ray Nagin

• Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.
  Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken."
  Then these three white boys came up to me and said, "Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin'. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you." So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, "Line up, boys!"
  • Dick Gregory

• California is going to be a Mexican state, we are going to control all the institutions. If people don’t like it they should leave.
  • Mario Obledo, 1998 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and former head of MALDEF

• I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
  • Martin Luther King

• In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.
  • Harry Blackmund

• It was hard for me to do the show (All American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show, and the host said, 'Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?' So I looked at the camera and said, "Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate."
  • Margaret Cho

• A Korean reporter once asked me, "'Do you think your Korean parents are ashamed because you talk about what you talk about on stage?" I said, "I don't think they're ashamed because they're Korean. I think any parents would be ashamed."
  • Margaret Cho

• There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The Negroes of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.
  • Pat Buchanan