Racism Quotes - page 20
To reiterate, rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the existing system of incarceration, we might envision an array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society. Alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class bias, and other structures of domination will not, in the final analysis, lead to decarceration and will not advance the goal of abolition.
Angela Davis
We have been aware of the need for these institutional strategies at least since 1935 - but of course before, but I'm choosing 1935 because that was the year when W.E.B. Du Bois published his germinal Black Reconstruction in America. And the question was not what should individual Black people do, but rather how to reorganize and restructure post-slavery society in order to guarantee the incorporation of those who had been formerly enslaved. The society could not remain the same - or should not have remained the same. Neoliberalism resists change at the individual level. It asks the individual to adapt to conditions of capitalism, to conditions of racism.
Angela Davis
Being a big black man in America, I literally do not know how to conduct myself in a physical space. I don't know how to meet people without it seeming intimidating. I don't know if I should wear glasses, if I should try to look extra gay, if I should stand up, sit down, wave my ID, not reach for an ID. I don't know. I am literally immobilized in the presence of a lot of police power. That is a reality that could cross any form of social class, because it's racist. And it's very Caribbean of me to think my class can exclude me from racism. It's very Caribbean of me to think that if I just dress nicer, if I just wear a suit... It has nothing to do with that, it's racism...
Marlon James
For me and for many others, Mengistu was the best choice [as chairman of the military council] for several reasons. He had come from a poor family background and was not an Amhara, the dominant ethnic group under Haile Selassie. As a person and as a junior officer he represented our rejection of past values. He would bring about a greater sense that all Ethiopians were equal, an end to class arrogance and racism. Many of us felt he would embody the spirit of the Revolution and symbolize the change we wanted to bring about.
Mengistu Haile Mariam
Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.
Peter Singer
If you're telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don't complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don't even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
to be "against war” has come to seem too easy a stance. War exists in a texture of possession and deprivation, economic and religious dogmas, racism, colonialist exploitation, nationalism, unequal power. Who decides to make war? Who is destroyed in it? Who creates the rhetoric of "terror” and "democracy”?
Adrienne Rich
Burchill divides up the chosen people into Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of an antisemite. Hilariously, she sets herself up as the Jewishness Police, railing against Jews who are not Jewish enough; and one of those, it turns out, is her local rabbi, Elli Tikvah Sarah. Burchill rails against the rabbi for, in this order: ignoring a bottle of champagne Burchill gave her in favour of elderflower wine made by the rabbi's girlfriend; "canoodling" with said girlfriend ("a Sapphic free-for-all", sneers the heretofore not exactly prudish Burchill), and advocating a dialogue with Islam.
Burchill doesn't include this in the book but, according to Rabbi Sarah, Burchill emailed the synagogue's congregants railing that "your rabbi respects PIG ISLAM". Aww, being used as a launchpad for a British columnist's racism – we're living in the Promised Land now, fellow Jews!
Julie Burchill
Hear me clearly: racism exists, it's a sin, and it should be resisted. But these SJWs, deeply embedded in institutions, and in command of the propaganda apparatus, are taking a genuine social problem - racism - that always needs attention, but construing it in a highly ideological way that has very little to do with addressing with this complex problem, and everything to do with advancing a narrative of command and control that demonizes an entire race of people as plunderers and parasites by nature, and incites others to despise them. We know from history where things like this go.
Rod Dreher
Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil." The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces. According to the New Testament, these powers can get hold of a man's total being and can control his life to such a degree that he is incapable of distinguishing himself from the alien power. This seems to be what has happened to white racism in America. It is a part of the spirit of the age, the ethos of the culture, so embedded in the social, economic, and political structure that white society is incapable of knowing its destructive nature. There is only one response: Fight it!
James Hal Cone
Some of my favorite writers are those who break form. I wanted to see if I could do that under their tutelage. I'm really proud of being able to combine the stories of the Ethiopians and the Italians, to force questions about both of them, about loyalty, about racism, about being subjugated by the very people who should be protecting you. These were the questions I wanted to bring forward.
Maaza Mengiste
José Ariel Blanco, the 25-year-old owner of a stationery store two blocks from the legislature, said he was thankful for Mr. Morales's achievements - chief among them, tackling the racism that the Indigenous had suffered for centuries. "My grandmother couldn't walk into a bank in her Indigenous clothes until Evo became president,” he said. "Now she can, and that won't change.”.
Evo Morales
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities -- he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth -- the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to. . . .
Malcolm X
In the end, you know, this whole thing about the feminist movement and the feminist art movement, in the end, when it comes down to it, as a Chicana artist, I know what my father has gone through, I know what my husband and my brothers have gone through, and I know what my nephews are going to go through with discrimination and racism. You know, I have to support them. They are my family. And I've seen it now more and more where white women are turning their back against men of color. You know, so their support isn't there as much as they vowed to do. You know, even though they're a minority...
Carmen Lomas Garza
Up to now, the U.S. women's liberation movement has been mainly concerned with sexism and ignored or denied the importance of racism. For the Chicana, the three types of oppression cannot be separated. They are all a part of the same system, they are three faces of the same enemy.
Elizabeth Martinez
Cornel West, the African American philosopher and writer, spoke recently in San Francisco talking about the importance of linkages. For example, he said gay and lesbian rights are an issue in the African American community. They aren't separate, outside of the community. Just because the issue is not welfare, or racism, or gangs, that doesn't mean it's not a Black community issue. I think that's a very useful and important way to look at things. I know a lot of Latinos wouldn't agree that gay and lesbian rights are a Latino issue. But we need to work for this understanding and make it clear that the issue is not a problem for a bunch of people outside the Latino community who happen to be gay or lesbian. It's inside our community. Taking that kind of position is the only way that in fact makes sense.
Elizabeth Martinez
