Quotes by John La Farge

“Discriminatory barriers in housing seem to be almost the sine qua non of prejudice. Men reflect their true values, ideas, and attitudes, most directly in the intimate primary realm of living that surrounds the home. Discriminatory barriers in housing are strong because they are probably the last citadel for those basic attitudes of racial antipathy which … still exist in the minds of the majority of white people. The idea of integration in housing directly challenges this citadel and the attitudes it represents. Integration in housing, therefore, has much deeper implication than integration in any other area of social intercourse.””

“Deep wounds are not easily healed. But the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine into the wounds of the stranger who lay helpless on the road to Jericho, and set him on the road to recovery. Each one of us can go and do likewise.””

“The Mass is the re-enactment of the cross’s mighty onslaught upon human differences: the breaking down of the wall of partition. We participate in common, as in one family, in the holy Eucharistic offering. We are united with one another through our union with Jesus Christ in Communion.””

“All but invisible to the outside world, the debate over the direction of the Federated Colored Catholics remains instructive. Most important, it marks the first significant break in the racialism undergirding so much of American Catholicism in the first part of the twentieth century. Both Thomas Turner and John LaFarge opposed discrimination. The debate was how to end it.””

“Certain roads lead nowhere; they are dead ends and blind alleys. Such a dead end, such a blind alley, is the path of racial segregation. Despite all fine talk and attempts to idealizing, despite any use or justification it had or may have had in earlier times and under earlier conditions, today it leads but into a cul-de-sac. Its pursuit breeds disorders infinitely greater than any evils which it seeks to avoid.””

“The distinctions of body and blood among men are transcended by unity with the Body and Blood of Christ.””

“Those who live, racially speaking, in a fool’s paradise will one day suffer from a painfully rude awakening.””

“Some years ago I talked to a clever young Northern businessman, who prides himself on his culture, yet was shocked that Yale’s football team had chosen a Negro, Levi Jackson, as its captain. Such a mind, with all its outward trappings of modernity and elegance, is completely out of tune with the real world.””

“A homogenous, hand-picked congregation where people are mutually conformable in all their minor social ways is agreeable. It makes parish life smoother. But to require such conformity is entirely un-Catholic; it is contrary not only to the spirit of the Catholic Church in general, but to the tradition of the Catholic Church in the United States.””

“If the Negro or any other type of citizen needs to be kept in his place, what is that place and please define it? If it means that people who have not yet attained a certain degree of culture must put up with the consequences of their own backwardness, we can naturally agree. But it is entirely illogical if it means that they are to be permanently consigned to an inferior status regardless of what degree of culture they may have attained. It is contrary to the entire tradition of American democracy to hold, even implicitly, that persons should be discouraged from emerging from a lower degree of culture or from developing the talents which they have received from the Creator.””

“It is anomalous, for instance, that in our big cities we think nothing of living next door, possibly in the same apartment house, to person whose family life is completely reprehensible according to our Catholic or Christian standards, as long as they do not molest us personally. Yet we become acutely disturbed at the presence of a well-bred, educated, law-abiding, neighborly family, merely because of the color of their skin.””

“It is an anomaly, for instance, that in a democracy like ours a newly landed immigrant in this country who has been with us only a few hours has more civil rights to his credit, even though still an alien, than one whose citizenship is rooted for several generations back. Yet an American citizen, a product of our schools, our culture, our entire United States civilization, an old American, in a very true sense, must still struggle for elementary rights, simply because he is identified in the popular mind with people who were once in a condition of servitude.””

“It is just as reprehensible to practise a racism in reverse as it is to show the more familiar type of racial prejudice. The individual must lay aside not only his dislike of people of another culture or appearance but his own sensitiveness and clannishness as well.””

“It is commonly observed how people can participate in impersonal situations where racial justice prevails, yet in other situations still hold the most unjust racial attitudes. It is almost impossible, however, to conceive of practising racial justice in the intimate institutions of home and neighborhood and at the same time harboring unjust racial attitudes.””

“The disadvantages that afflict the members of a given racial group cannot be treated merely as the concern of the disadvantaged group alone: they can only be treated adequately and successfully by the joint action of all concerned.””

“In spite of good intentions, the net effect of Negro solidarity proved to be a tremendous obstacle to integration in Catholic life. A separatist organization was not in a very strategic position to protest against separatism.””