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Cebo Campbell Quotes

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Famous Cebo Campbell Quotes

“How could she possibly keep her daughter safe from all that being black in this country weaponized against her? Protect her life, of course, but proportionally protect her mind and heart? Did any place exist where the path to her daughter finding herself wasn't obstructed? Was there ever any room in this country for little black girls to fully self-actualize?”

RacismSafetyGirlsMothersAfrican AmericansBlacksDaughtersBlack GirlsBlack Mothers
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“I ain't ever felt special my whole life." "What did you feel?" "Hard to explain. Felt like the opposite of special. Like a big black void moving through the world. Empty, if not for all the people trying to fill it with their own judgments on me." "The thing about voids, Charlie Brunton, is ain't nothing inside of them but light they can't figure out how to free.”

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Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“So, what kind of things do you like?" Sidney asked. "Well, I love to dance and sing like my momma. I like trying new things. I like helping people. I like it when boys think I'm intimidating, which they should. But I also know I'm still young, so I'm giving myself space to learn all the things I like. And not being hard on myself for not being what somebody else wants. That's all. Trusting my instincts. Never making myself small for other people. And no judgment." "That sounds perfect." "Not perfect. In progress.”

ProgressSelf LoveSelf AcceptanceKnowing Oneself
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“I just wish we could go back to when everybody was happy." "When was everybody happy? What time was that? Did I miss getting on that train?" He leaned a bit into her space. "No one was happy, Sidney. We were just a bunch of people getting on with it, living our lives with monsters on our backs. No, nobody was happy, and nobody told the truth." "What was the truth?" "That the world wasn't ever equal. And the white folks who made it that way--the ones who fought, silent and spitting, to keep it that way--refused all responsibility for what it meant. You can't imagine the inhumanity, horrors on top of horrors. People shot in the streets, in their homes, at grocery stores, so much that after a while some white folks just kind of shrugged. No one was fighting for our bodies. And it went on like that for so long I think we all started to believe that was just the way life was supposed to be. Trust me when I tell you, I've been black all over the world and I always knew what that meant. Not welcomed anywhere, and yet there ain't nowhere else to go. Damn, what a storm in the mind.”

HappinessRacePrejudiceInequalityBigotryAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsInhumanityWhites
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“Young black boys, Charlie thought, the most marvelous beings in the universe. As nonchalantly as Herald bit into that fruit did black boys ever ponder their influence on the whole world. How effortlessly they rounded the shape of the earth with their swagger and illuminated its days with their creativity. Their hope, Charlie mused, offered even the bleakest parts of our planet a second sun.”

ChildrenHopeBoysCreativityInfluenceAfrican AmericansBlacksSwaggerBlack Boys
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“You're locked up here in your castle thinking we are all damned. But we're the lucky ones." "Lucky how?" "Lucky because the world has tried to destroy me in every kind of way, but I am still here. So are you. So are a lot of good people. Ain't no other people in the history of the world ever had so little of a serving of living as us. And now, we got all of it.”

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Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“At the cruising height, Charlie could see how little light still burned in the country below. So much of the land cloaked in darkness. All the space between cities and towns, connecting mountains to rivers, shore to shore. The darkness held America together. Looking down at a black immensity, Charlie saw the darkness as its own kind of beauty, experiencing for once the full shape of it, its beginning endless, its end ceaselessly moving. A form that held all the power of the universe and, without sound or grievance, gave every bit of that power all away.”

LightAmericaDarknessUnited StatesUsaAfrican AmericansBlacksLight Vs DarkLight Vs Darkness
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“I don't hate white people. I hate the whole world for letting what happened to us go on the way it did. You telling me hundreds of years of torture and couldn't nobody stop it? And ain't nobody want to rectify it? Hell yeah, damn right I'm mad and I'll be mad forever, until the day I die, and even then I want them to set my coffin on fire so I can be mad in the afterlife. Because what happened to our people deserves that kind of mad. And if won't nobody else feel it, I'll goddamn feel it enough for everybody. That's my liberation.”

HateRaceAngerLiberationAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesInequity
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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