“Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro s making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance...Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are identical...There is not help or healing in appraising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present. p543 (From a 1922 Report on the 1919 Chicago Riots)”
“Considering the way American education is going in the direction of commercialization and corporatization speaks volumes about how education is getting hijacked; it is being turned into a tool of oppression and creating wider gaps between the rich and the poor rather than fulfilling its purpose of setting minds and bodies free.”
“Climate change acts as an accelerant to many of our social ills (inequality, wars, racism, sexual violence), but it can also be an accelerant for the opposite, for the forces working for economic and social justice and against militarism. Indeed, the climate crisis, by presenting our species with an existential threat and putting us on a firm and unyielding science-based deadline, might just be the catalyst we need to knit together a great many powerful movements bound together by a belief in the inherent worth and value of all people and united by a rejection of the sacrifice zone mentality, whether it applies to peoples or to places.”
“Couldn t a woman be happy doing a great many things, just as a man could?”
“It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artisans, drunkards, and paupers, she said, perverse still at his differing from her. They see life as it is, of course; but few of the people in the colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires sons.”
“Our humanity is worth a little discomfort, it s actually worth a lot of discomfort.”
“The civil rights movement is evolving from a protest movement into a full-fledged social movement--an evolution calling its very name into question. It is now concerned not merely with removing the barriers to full opportunity but with achieving the fact of equality. From sit-ins and Freedom Rides we have gone into rent strikes, boycotts, community organization, and political action. As a consequence of this natural evolution, the Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation, urban decay, de facto school segregation. These are problems which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society s failure to meet not only the Negro s needs but human needs generally.”
“Equality says we treat everyone the same, regardless of headwinds or tailwinds. Equity says we give people what they need to have the same access and opportunities as others, taking into account the headwinds they face, which may mean differential treatment for some groups.”
“What matters most to me, is that I know how I feel, and the rest of the world might catch up one day, even if it’ll be a quiet revolution over longer than my lifetime, if it happens at all”
“Of course I can cook. I m an adult. Feeding myself is part of the deal.”
“And I hope that you’ll never get it into your head that just because a woman deserves every opportunity you do, you have to stop holding the door open for her when you can. That you ll never think it s impossible to be equals and behave like a gentleman at the same time.”
“There is plenty that can be said about your grandfathers generation of men, but they wouldn t have had time to learn about everything in the world if the women of their generation hadn t taken care of everything else while they did.”
“We are saying that women -- as a sex -- are not more sinful than men. Women are not more deceivable than men. Women are not less intelligent than men. Women are not more prone to error than men. Women are not more dangerous than men. Women are not more arrogant or domineering than men. Women are not to be viewed with more suspicion than men. All women are born into sin, unrighteous by both nature and choice -- as are all men.”
“You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy—perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers—erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge.”
“Various mental tests or scholastic tests have been criticized as unfair because different groups perform very differently on such tests. But one reply to critics summarized the issue succinctly: “The tests are not unfair. Life is unfair and the tests measure the results.”
“Wanting to hurt, degrade, insult, or discriminate against a person or a group of people because of their sexual orientation is an abomination. I got a firsthand lesson in how deep and grotesque the hate and injustice toward my LGBT comrades run in our culture.”
“To do a modest bit of good while doing nothing about the larger system is to keep the painting. You are chewing on the fruit of an injustice. You may be working on a prison education program, but you are choosing not to prioritize the pursuit of wage and labor laws that would make people s lives more stable and perhaps keep some of them out of jail. You may be sponsoring a loan forgiveness initiative for law school students, but you are choosing not to prioritize seeking a tax code that would take more from you and cut their debts. Your management consulting firm may be writing reports about unlocking trillions of dollars worth of women s potential, but it is choosing not to advise its clients to stop lobbying against the social programs that have been shown in other societies to help women achieve the equality fantasized about in consultants reports.”