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I Was Fortunate Enough To Have Been Raised To A Certain Point Before I Got Into The Race Thing. I Had Other Views Of What A Human Is, So I Was Never Able To See Racism As The Big Question. Racism Was Horrendous, But There Were Other Aspects To Life.

-Sidney Poitier

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I Was Fortunate Enough

Sidney Poitier

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I Was Fortunate Enough To Have Been Raised To A Certain Point Before I Got Into The Race Thing. I Had Other Views Of What A Human Is, So I Was Never Able To See Racism As The Big Question. Racism Was Horrendous, But There Were Other Aspects To Life.

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I Lived In A Country Where I Couldn't Live Where I Wanted To Live. I Lived In A Country Where I Couldn't Go Where I Wanted To Eat. I Lived In A Country Where I Couldn't Get A Job, Except For Those Put Aside For People Of My Colour Or Caste.

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I've Learned That I Must Find Positive Outlets For Anger Or It Will Destroy Me. There Is A Certain Anger: It Reaches Such Intensity That To Express It Fully Would Require Homicidal Rage--self Destructive, Destroy The World Rage--and Its Flame Burns Because The World Is So Unjust. I Have To Try To Find A Way To Channel That Anger To The Positive, And The Highest Positive Is Forgiveness.

If You Apply Reason And Logic To This Career Of Mine, You're Not Going To Get Very Far. You Simply Won't.

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I Was Born Two Months Early, And Everyone Had Given Up On Me. But My Mother Insisted On My Life.

I Didn't Run Into Racism Until We Moved To Nassau When I Was Ten And A Half, But It Was Vastly Different From The Kind Of Horrendous Oppression That Black People In Miami Were Under When I Moved There At 15. I Found Florida An Antihuman Place.

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