It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
-- Toni Morrison (18 February 1931 - 5 August 2019), American writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, "A Humanist View", an address at the Portland State University Black Studies Center Public Dialogue on the American Dream Pt. 2 (30 May 1975)
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