Whiteness Quotes

No one tells every white person in this country how to be. No one tells every Hispanic, or Asian or Jewish person in this country how to be. There is no single definition of whiteness or single definition of blackness.

The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the blacks will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness.

The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.

Our holiness is an effect, not a cause; so long as our eyes are on our own personal whiteness as an end in itself, the thing breaks down.

If whiteness were of no particular advantage, then having a fuller color wheel of skin tones would be purely a matter of celebration. But whiteness - just a drop of it - does still carry privilege. You learn that very young in America.

Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth.

If half-black Barack Obama had decided years ago to call himself white - which his genes certainly entitled him to do - his story would have carried very different meaning. If millions of part-black people had followed him into whiteness, then the N.A.A.C.P. would be in true crisis.