Color and Race in America

I’m going to paraphrase the introduction of a Prince cover of, Betcha By Golly Wow!” Originally performed by The Stylistics.

“Baby, sometimes

A man can’t find words to express everything he feels inside

But every just so often

The words of another … seem to work out fine”

Writing about race and history in America sometimes leaves me searching for original thoughts to express. I only have to look back at what has been said and written by others to remind and inspire me to get back on my horse and continue on. Here is today’s inspiration:

I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege, men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race. W.E.B. Du Bois

I am for the ‘immediate, unconditional, and universal’ enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition. Frederick Douglass

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. Langston Hughes

Those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. Carter G. Woodson

We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish. Richard Wright

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye. Ta-Nehisi Coates

I am America. Only, I’m the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own — get used to me! Muhammad Ali

Does anybody hear us pray for Michael Brown or Freddie Gray? Peace is more than the absence of war. … Maybe we can finally say, enough is enough, it’s time for love. Prince

Sixty-five years have passed, and I still remember the face of young Emmett Till. … Despite real progress, I can’t help but think of young Emmett today as I watch video after video after video of unarmed Black Americans being killed, and falsely accused. My heart breaks for these men and women, their families and the country that let them down — again. My fellow Americans, this is a special moment in our history. Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice in a peaceful, orderly, nonviolent fashion, we must do so again. John Lewis

What the people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise. Barbara C. Jordan

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This post was previously published on William Spivey’s blog.

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