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Quote by Bebe Moore Campbell

“In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he'd never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed that Negroes had their own special kind of grieving ritual, another language, something other than tears they used to express their sadness.”

Quote by Bebe Moore Campbell

Book:Your Blues Ain't Like Mine
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Your Blues Ain't Like Mine

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Bebe Moore Campbell
Bebe Moore Campbell

Bebe Moore Campbell was an American author known for her insightful exploration of racial, gender, and social issues. Her work spans various genres, including novels, essays, and children's literature. Campbell's writing career began in the 1980s, and her works often delve into themes of race relations and identity. more

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“But I learned from these new books that Southerners think we are really rather sad. They have an idea of a people dwelling on a mountain, inbred, lonely, mysterious; that we ritually climb and descend, and make sacrifices, and burn eternal flames, and send bridal parties from village to village in the spring so men like Daila can impregnate women like me, all in order to placate something implacable. They see our culture as rich, in the same way perhaps that a seam of ancient ore is rich — because of compression and repression. They imagine that we drink a lot, even more than we do (and it is a thing I learned from the bar, that they drink as much as we, that every culture that’s discovered alcohol drinks too much) and that we are poorer than we are because only a few of us sell anything to them. A melancholy drunken land, a land of storytellers, a land of sly jokes, an Asam-hating land, and nothing like the land I remembered. It was as if someone had constructed a scaffolding around us, and then removed us and written only about the scaffolding. The more I read, the more the materials of the scaffolding — splintered wood, narrow pipes of metal — slid into the hollows of my bones. I knew that the next time I went to the mountain, I would have a stranger’s mind in mine. Though I walked in streets I had known since girlhood, I would never again be able to step upon them without an erudite word in my head and a bracing of metal in my marrow.”

ColonialismOrientalismOthering
Book:The Breath of the Sun
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“Just outside the walls of the City, trouble was brewing. They came in boats from a land far across the sea. Many boats crammed with many hopefuls washed up on the shores in the shadow of the great cliffs. Like driftwood. These flotsam people were dazed, broken – perhaps at an extreme – optimistic. Surely there would be salvation within the thick city walls? They appeared in a whisper – like the hissing of the surf. No citizen came to welcome them. No delegates. No photo-ops for ambitious politicians. Instead, only the City’s military – soldiers and officers with faces as hard and blank as the cliff the City teetered upon – were waiting. They were herded in silence. Those without papers were left on the stony beach. There would be tents, bunks, and prefab houses in time. The lucky ones were escorted up the great lifts and transported along the subway system – out of sight. A Downtown station would process them. See this crowd of Driftwood people, Eva. See them huddle together in the dark, the glint of hope in their eyes. The color of their skin, how the women covered their hair, and how the men wore their beards – these were the superficial differences that would mark them so starkly here. The label of ‘other’ already hung around their necks without them even knowing.”

RefugeesOthernessOthering
Book:The Silent Symphony
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“The polarities of personality often present as victim and oppressor, the haves and the have nots, rights and wrongs, and other seemingly persistent divisions in our society. These polarities are not the source of this tension, but when we relate with the polarities through a reactionary state of operation, we can easily divide ourselves along those lines. Us and them. The familiar and the other. When we don't own our own wholeness, when we identity too much with something other than our core worth, we collapse into one pole, as in being with or against others. This othering process is myopic, in that it doesn't take into account that our own wholeness is dependent on reclaiming the alternate pole, the person we think we are not, the "other" within us. When we are able to relate with each pole from a place of responsiveness, where we stand in recognition of our own innate wholeness, the experience of polarity can be one of expansion, flow, contrast and generative transformation, rather than division. Once we reckon with the paradox of how the perceived other is both distinct, and a direct reflection of us, then we see ourselves in that mirror. We see everyone and everything as reflecting an aspect of ourself that we get to reclaim. Those we might have judged become guideposts for our own liberation. Our triggers become welcomed signs that we have rejected something inside us. The idea that you are either with us or against us is a limiting lens that perpetuates humanity's suffering. The recognition that you are us, that everyone is us, allows our self-love to humanize others into belonging.”

Self LoveSelf RealizationIntegrationPolarizationRadical AcceptanceInternal Family SystemsOtheringDepth PsychologyParts WorkSister Outsider
Book:You Are Us: How to Build Bridges in a Polarized World
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“Having a driving force to achieve your goals is not enough. You must connect with the why behind each goal to determine whether they will get you to the level of success your inner self will be satisfied with.”

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Book:Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You
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“Proximity to Whiteness can help immigrants and people of color literally survive in this country. Your othering will be minimized, and if you're lucky, you can be spared from discrimination, profiling, and ending up on the wrong registries.”

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Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“Starting from the premise of the organic unity of the nation, the opposition can be painted as social groups outside the ‘nation’, since, simply put, they threaten the nation’s natural harmony. However, this concept is only plausible if the regime, or, more precisely, the military, is able to portray itself as a representative of the nation and guardian of the state, which it has been very successful in doing. Hence, opposition to the military regime is equated with treason to the nation, and thus should be repressed by any means necessary. The narrative used to solicit popular support involved the propagation of numerous conspiracy theories, including the claim that the events of 2011, the groups that participated in it, and those who support it are part of a systemic effort to destroy the Egyptian state, which was only thwarted by the military’s intervention in 2013.” Chapter “Genesis”, page 33”

MilitaryUnityTyrannyOppressionConspiracyEgyptOtheringCoupModern EgyptEl Sisi
Book:Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge
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“When describing the opposition, remaining true to the regime narrative, Sisi coined a new term: ‘The people of evil’ (BBC, 2016). The term started to gain currency in 2016, when popular opposition to the transfer of the two islands in the Red Sea, Tiran and Sanafir, from Egyptian to Saudi sovereignty became apparent. However, it first made an appearance during Sisi’s speech inaugurating the nee Suez Canal in 2015 (Armbrust, 2019, p. 223). Even though it was never explicitly defined, it became clear that Sisi used it to describe the opposition in general, with specific mention of those who doubted and criticized the regimes ‘achievements’ (RT, 2019). Sisi used a rhetoric that not only framed the opposition as evil but also framed the regime as good, and the conflict between them as an existential struggle between good and evil: a biblical image par excellence. The framing of the opposition as evil and treasonous was not only a rhetorical device but also laid down the foundation of mass repression.” Chapter “Genesis”, Pages 37-38”

PropagandaGood And EvilRhetoricEgyptTreasonPolarizationOtheringDehumanizingModern EgyptEl Sisi
Book:Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge
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