Existing comment:
"I live in the ghetto, the ghetto don't live in me" -- Wise Intelligent
"White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, their culture is less civilized, and their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples." -- Cornel West
"Tis better to fight, and die if need be, Than to live, if to live means to compromise manhood, And to sacrifice the sacred things that life is made of." -- AJ Smitherman
"A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial." -- Ayi Kwei Armah
"Who gives you the right to take us from our culture? Blind us from our heritage? Trade my ancestors for material goods then demote them from statuses of Queens, Kings, Prophets, and profitable villagers and villages from which they belonged, to common slaves? Damn our ancestors were strong, physically and mentally to withstand the ignorant and brutal ways. Our oppressors then, generations later still oppress, but generations later determined black minds still progress." -- Evocalist, (The Brothas Unda Madness)
"I refuse to despair in this moment. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism, because I think in any social revolution the one thing that keeps it going is hope, and when hope dies somehow the revolution degenerates into a kind of nihilistic philosophy which says you must engage in disruption for disruption's sake...I believe that the forces of goodwill, white and black, in this country can work together to bring about a resolution...We have the resources to do it..." -- Tavis Smiley
"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country." -- Malcolm X
"Old measures of health not only have failed to improve significantly but have stayed the same: some have even worsened. Mainstream newspapers and magazines often report disease in an ethnocentric manner that shrouds its true cost among African Americans. For example, despite the heavy emphasis on genetic ailments among blacks, fewer than 0.5 percent of black deaths -- that's less than one death in two hundred -- can be attributed to hereditary disorders such as sickle-cell anemia. A closer look at the troubling numbers reveals that blacks are dying not of exotic, incurable, poorly understood illnesses nor of genetic diseases that target only them, but rather from common ailments that are more often prevented and treated among whites than among blacks." -- Harriet A. Washington
"I'll be bossy and damn proud! Banning words, please. Try banning the system that produces policies that promote inequity." -- Rosa Clemente
"Clear-cut superiority in things social and economic -- by whatever means -- has been a scruples-free premise of American ruling class authority from the society's inception to the present. The initial socioeconomic advantage, begotten by chattel slavery, was enforced by undaunted violence and the constant threat of more violence" -- Huey P. Newton
"It just goes on, and on, and on. Race and racism is a reality that so many of us grow up learning to just deal with. But if we ever hope to move past it, it can't just be on people of color to deal with it," -- Michelle Obama
"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." -- Roberto Clemente |