Toni Morrison on Racism
"There are two things I want to see in life. One is a white kid shot in the back by a cop. Never happened. The second thing I want to see: a record of any white man in the entire history of the world who has been convicted of raping a black woman. Just one." (Hoby)
"Her interview with the Telegraph offers searing commentary on race relations throughout the interview, connecting America's past with its present. She says racism "is the money-maker" in the U.S., drawing a line from slavery to today's disproportionately black prison population (also known as the Prison Industrial Complex, an economic system wherein companies and governments makes money off the proliferation of prisons, policing and surveillance). Just as black bodies were commodities used on plantations, these bodies are abused by the criminal justice system today." (Bianco)
"Race is 'both an empty category and one of the most destructive and powerful forms of social catagorization" (Race-ing Justice)
""Don't you understand that the people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft? There is something distorted about the psyche. It's a huge waste, and it's a corruption, and it's a distortion. It's a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is." (Blay)
"All the books that were being published by African-Amercain guys were saying 'screw whitey', or some variation of that. Not the scholars but the pop books. And the other thing they said was, 'You have to confront the oppressor.' I understand that. But you don't have to look at the world through his eyes. I'm not a stereotype; I'm not somebody else's vision of who I am. And so when people said at that time Black is beautiful - yeah? Of course. Who said it wasn't? So I was trying to say, in The Bluest Eye, wait a minute. Guys. There was a time when Black wasn't beautiful. And you hurt.." (Brockes)
"“scientifically there’s no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice. Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice. Folks who practice it would be nothing without it.” (Beloved)
""What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Still smart? Do you still like yourself? ...If you can only be tall because someone's on their knees, then you have a serious problem." (Blay)
" I wanted to focus on how something as grotesque as the demonisation of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female." (Hoby)
When Obama was elected, it was the first time I felt truly American. I felt very powerfully patriotic when I went to the inauguration of Barack Obama. I felt like a kid. The marines and the flag, which i never look at-- all of a sudden it looked...nice." (Brockes)
"Slavery, Morrison said in the interview, moved America "closer to the economy of an industrialized Europe, far in advance of what it would have been," which she says is continuing through the vast imprisonment of black people. In fact, Morrison said, police "don't stop and frisk on Wall Street, which is where they should really go." (Bianco)
“I’m writing for black people in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year-old coloured girl from Lorain, Ohio. I don’t have to apologise or consider myself limited because I don’t [write about white people] – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books. The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it." (Hoby)
"Toni Morrison is without a doubt one of the greatest novelists of all time, and one of the most profound thinkers on race and identity politics in America. Naturally, Morrison gets asked to share her thoughts on race all the time, but perhaps one of her most profound answers to the question "How do you feel about racism?" comes from the 1993 Charlie Rose interview above. "That's the wrong question," Morrison responds. "How do you feel?" " (Blay)
