Maya Angelou quotes about race & the color line

Does my sassiness upset you?

I was born to work but I ain’t no mule.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave

The past is brighter yet.

But getting up stays on my mind

Living our lives with flash and style

Ain’t we colorful folks?

I never heard them holler ’cause the work was hard.

Cotton rows crisscross the world

Their responses confirmed my belief that courage is the most important of all the virtues.

We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere.

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.

Diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.

A conversation between friends can sound as melodic as a scripted song.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.