Racism In Britain Quotes

“We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in willful ignorance.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Being constantly looked at like an alien in the country you were born in requires true tolerance.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“What history had I inherited that left me an alien in my place of birth?”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“...I never once believed what they wanted us to believe - that we as black people are inferior to whites...”
― Darcus Howe

“We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“Lynchings aren't a vile,inhuman footnote of white history. Lynchings occur every day on the streets of Western countries.

Every time the neck of a black man,woman or child is pinned to the ground by the knee of a police officer, every time a black man,woman or child is chased down in the street and shot simply for being there, every time a black man woman or child is judged purely because of colour,every time a white individual crosses the street to avoid walking past a black man,woman or child, avoids sitting beside a black man woman or child on public transport or says or does nothing when a black man,woman or child is being subjected to abuse is, in itself, a modern day lynching.”
― R.Patient

“The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but 'rather that Britain had come to us'. They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of the colonies.”
― Akala, Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire / Black Listed / Black and British: A Forgotten History

“Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs
perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation
whereupon she walked right back out again

in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then
she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room
and in her case, slamming the door”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“You fooled us. Render your work, not your lives.
This seems like the newest answer to an old question.
Cheap muscle and blood to build you an Empire-
that we can't stay in. Gran's gone missing from
Saturday morning. Brixton Market? No one is frowning at
the quality of the yams, or asking how the snapper's
eye so cloudy. There'll be no Saturday soup tonight.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“How is it I'm begging you for housing,
when you burnt my building down?
You all ain't even playing fake-nice, like those
other murderers. You are all cut-eye and snarls,
all straight jargon, and nothing but the jargon.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“The Invaders are in your very midst!’
The Newsman admits.
The People
start having fits
after paying him handsomely
for his services.”
― Roy Duffield, Bacchus Against the Wall