"Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on. It is not healthy when a nation lives inside a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens. For it is never the one who suffers injustice who is the injured one, but the one who is unjust. Slavery bred a race of idle and shiftless white men, and race prejudice continues the evil work. White people who insist on their superority because of the color of the skin they were born with- can there be so empty and false a superiority as this? Who is injured the most by that foolish assumption, the colored or the white? In his soul it s the white man. It is the wise white people who ought now to be angry because of race prejudice, for as surely as night follows day our country will fail in its democracy because of race prejudice unless we root it out. We cannot grow in strength and leadership for democracy so long as we carry deep in our being this fatal fault."

Pearl S. Buck Literature See all quotes by Pearl S. Buck →

React to this quote

More by Pearl S. Buck

“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.”

“The street is noisy and the men and women are not perfect in the technique of their expression as the statues are. They are ugly and imperfect, incomplete even as human beings, and where they come from and where they go cannot be known. But they are people and therefore infinitely to be preferred to those who stand upon the pedestals of art.”

“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”

“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.”

“Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.”

Resonant Thoughts

"In like manner, as the statement is false "that the Hebrews, being Egyptians, dated the commencement from the time of their rebellion," so also is this, "that in the days of Jesus others who were Jews…"

— Origen

Religion

#philosophy

"There are men in the House of Commons, who profess in a special sense to be the representatives of Labour, who would not allow me, who represent a great working-class constituency...to claim to repres…"

— Joseph Chamberlain

Politics1836–1914

#time

"Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities, as a former general counsel for the Department of the Na…"

— John Leonard (critic)

Literature1890–1974

#leadership

"The Netanyahu government was chosen lawfully, in alliance with the rules of democracy. Those who cry out: "They've deprived us of our country," are, well, no more than crybabies. The rules of democrac…"

— Yoel Esteron

Business1955

#politics