Whitest Black Man Quotes

But Wyatt stopped for a moment and blinked a couple of times thoughtfully. “I don’t normally mention this kind of thing,” he said, “but that was probably the whitest experience I ever had.” Now, Wyatt is black, and I am white, and his comment really took me by surprise. It took me by surprise in the way white people are constantly being taken by surprise. How could you consider something about my life being anything but totally ordinary and right? After all, I am a white person. Better than that, I am a straight white man, which for a long time in American culture equaled default human.

There was a free nigger there from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? they said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote, when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ’lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself, if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me--I'll never vote agin as long as I live.

Church, the cross was raised high by slaveholders and lifted up in fields full of white-hooded men. It has hung with a pale white hippie man nailed to it over our sanctuaries for years. Not only are we complicit, but we are perpetrators. Our seminaries still teach theology as if the only important thinkers have been European scholars.

Capitalism is a satanic structure that’s built on the idea of building a meritocracy in the midst of democracy. In this system, we are told if we work hard and put one foot in front of the other, we too can be at the top of the food chain. Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the head of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God. Our quest to be at the top of the food chain is the antithesis of the Jesus message. Capitalism is built on profits at the expense of the needs of others and often is the cause of the suffering of others. Generational wealth, historical inequities, and privilege all demand that if we are to tackle white supremacy, we have to also look at predatory economic policies.

I can’t decide if you’re the blackest white man I’ve ever met or the whitest black man.” He sucked in his breath, the words crashing into him. He felt as if she had unmasked him, laid bare the central conundrum of his life. For the rest of his life, her words would haunt him. He knew this with an immediate and fierce surety.

can’t decide if you’re the blackest white man I’ve ever met or the whitest black man.

A black man in a puffy jacket peers in at us, whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. The whites of his eyes, too, look really white, the inside of his lip the baby pink of Mrs. Norkus’s petunias. He takes our measure—what can he be thinking, a priest traveling with all these women? He smiles, points, gives Mum a set of quick, easy instructions. From the back seat we three gape at him with our mouths half open. Anne pats my knee: Stop staring, sweetie. The puffy-coat man stands back after giving his big-smile directions: “Ya can’t miss it!” Mum will chuckle over this the whole day, repeating “‘Ya can’t miss it!’” as if to say, Mother of Mary, they talk just like us! She’ll shake her head. “That man was so nice. Wasn’t that man nice, girls? ‘Ya can’t miss it!’” And we don’t. Down this street, turn here, up that street, turn there, and look-girls-look: the White House, just where that nice man said.