I feel like a blind man searching a dark room.
(Old Man Alone on Labor Day Weekend — blog post)

Racial ignorance is a prison from which there is no escape because there’re no doors. And there are old, old men, and old, old women running institutions, governments, homes all over the world who need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them. And they are very easily identified. They are the petulant ones who call themselves proud, and they are the disdainful ones who call themselves fastidious, and they are the mean-spirited ones who call themselves just. They thrive on the failures of those unlike them; they are the ones who measure their wealth by the desperation of the poor. They are the ones who know personal success only when they can identify deficiencies in other racial and ethnic groups. They are in prisons of their own construction: and their ignorance and their stunted emotional growth consistently boggle the mind.

Racism is a phenomenal thing; it is like a thick mist that obscures the vision and judgment of even great minds.

I feel like a blind man searching a dark room for a pair of black socks that aren’t there.

Racism stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of human history.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Men! Too blind to see what a stone could see, and too stubborn to be trusted to think for themselves.

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups.

When I hear of an ‘equity’ in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room—looking for a black hat—which isn’t there.

A vision of cultural homogeneity that seeks to deflect attention away from or even excuse the oppressive, dehumanizing impact of white supremacy on the lives of black people by suggesting black people are racist too indicates that the culture remains ignorant of what racism really is and how it works. It shows that people are in denial. Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks (they could have such feelings and leave us alone) but because it is a system that promotes domination and subjugation?

Translation: With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

It is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost

Yet having been inculcated with the unchallengeable belief that they are victims of white society, too many black people believe that any disadvantage they may suffer is not the result of bad luck, circumstances beyond anyone's control or their own behaviour but must be the product of white racism.

Racism is a disease of white people