American foreign policy issues largely from a domestic mill of competing forces. If the forces are not there competing to cause us to do the right thing, invariably nothing right happens.

—Randall Robinson

About Randall Robinson

Portrait of Randall Robinson

Randall Robinson (July 6, 1941 – March 24, 2023) was an American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He was known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Due to his frustration...

More quotations tagged with “America”

I think it's helpful to remind white ethnics that they, too, came here in boats; that they, too, lived in slums; that they, too, had yellow fever; that they, too, were stigmatized as incorrigible; that they, too, had the highest homicide rates and the highest incarceration rates and the highest rates of mental illness; and that everything that was said about them in those days is now being said about Salvadorans, Dominicans, African Americans, Mexicans, Vietnamese, and Cambodians in our inner cities.

—Tom Hayden

I still say black. I say it because… African American… doesn't make your life any easier. You don't see black people… saying, "Oh yeah, African American. Man, I'll tell ya, this beats the hell outta being black."… You don't see any of us going into Bank of America [saying], "Excuse me, I'm here to pick up my loan."… You were rejected for that loan last week."… "I was black then. See, I'm African American now. I'll just go in the vault and take what I need.

—Wanda Sykes

The melting pot failed to function in one crucial area. Religions and nationalities, however different, generally learned to live together, even to grow together, in America. But color was something else. Reds were murdered like wild animals. Yellows were characterized as a peril and incarcerated en masse during World War II for no really good reason by our most liberal president. Browns have been abused as the new slave labor on farms. The blacks, who did not come here willingly, are now, more than a century after emancipation by Lincoln, still suffering a host of slavelike inequalities.

—Theodore M. Hesburgh

History

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