Quotes about Ethnicity

What are you called? Georgette. How are you called? Jacob. That's a Flemish name. American too. You're not Flamand? No, American. Good, I detest Flamands.

No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.

If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker.

Without a transcendent connection, each of us is stuck in his own little psyche, struggling to create meaning and produce an identity all by himself. When we inevitably fail at this-because we can't do it alone-we suffer shame and self-defeat. Or we try to pretend that our small universe of country, ethnicity, team, or denomination is actually the center of the world.

The first-half-of-life container, nevertheless, is constructed through impulse controls; traditions; group symbols; family loyalties; basic respect for authority; civil and church laws; and a sense of the goodness, value, and special importance of your country, ethnicity, and religion (as for example, the Jews' sense of their "chosenness").

The qualities of mongrels are rarely admirable, and the mixture of the Arab and negro types has produced a debased and cruel breed, more shocking because they are more intelligent than the primitive savages.

Why act the part of a Jew when you're Greek? Don't you know why it is that a person is called a Jew, Syrian, or Egyptian? And when we see someone hesitating between two creeds, we're accustomed to say, 'He is no Jew, but is merely acting the part.' But when he assumes the frame of mind of one who has been baptized * and has made his choice, then he really is a Jew, and is called by that name.

While the United States is becoming the most culturally diverse nation in the world, less than 5.5% of Christian congregations are multiethnic.