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Quote by Bayard Rustin

“Economic and social deprivation, if accepted by its victims as their lot in life, breeds passivity, even docility. The miserable yield to their fate as divinely ordained or as their own fault. And, indeed, many Negroes in earlier generations felt that way. Today young Negroes aren't having any of this. They don't share the feeling that something must be wrong with them, that they are responsible for their own exclusion from this affluent society. The civil rights movement--in fact, the whole liberal trend beginning with John Kennedy's election--has told them otherwise. These young Negroes are right. The promises made to them were good and necessary and long, long overdue. The youth were right to believe in them. The only trouble is that the promises were not fulfilled.”

Quote by Bayard Rustin

Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

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Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was a prominent African American civil rights activist who played a significant role in the American civil rights movement. He was a strategist and advisor to many civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin was a key figure in the organization of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political protests in U.S. history. He was also a leader in the gay rights movement and advocated for nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. more

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RaceRacismEqualityCivil RightsInequalityAfrican AmericansBlacksCivil Rights Movement
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“So much about being a woman who's had the good fortune to be offered some choices, and yet not good enough fortune to live in a world with gender equality, is about giving up some of what we want and making peace with not "having it all". Many women give up dreams and ideals as they patch together careers, marriage, children. My career-centrered path should not be read as a rejection of the domestic and care aspects of life.”

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“To understand why kids from low-income households do poorly in school, we would do well to understand what their lives at home are like. But we must also step back and situate their lives within the broader social context. This includes trying to understand whta material conditions are like for parents, what school experiences are like for kids, and finally and least often done, what higher-income families are doing for their kids. It is when we do all this that we can have a more complete and accurate understanding of how kids from low-income families, within this system, are compelled to play a game they cannot win because someone else is setting the rules.”

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“In state discourse about poverty, notions about 'charity', and about those with more 'helping' those with less, have become increasingly salient. In tandem with this, a slew of new specialized agencies, programs and schemes, and personnel have been constructed to deal with'the needy'. This way of framing the problem of poverty isolates it - detaches the issues and challenges faced by a small minority of the population from those faced by everyone else. It dislodges the issue of poverty from the broader political economy in which it is produced. Importantly, it frames public intervention as 'charity', as 'help' - in other words, beyond public responsibility - and recipients as 'recipients' rather than as members of society with rights to certain basic levels of well-being and security.”

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“Un ami à qui je racontais ma mésaventure m’a dit en riant : « Ça t’apprendra à admirer des fascistes. » C’était expéditif et, je crois, juste. Herzog, capable d’une vibrante compassion pour un aborigène sourd-muet ou un vagabond schizophrène, considérait un jeune cinéphile à lunettes comme une punaise méritant d’être moralement écrabouillée, et j’étais quant à moi le client idéal pour me faire traiter de la sorte. Il me semble qu’on touche là quelque chose qui est le nerf du fascisme. Si on le dénude, ce nerf, que trouve-t-on ? En étant radical, une vision du monde évidemment scandaleuse : übermenschen et untermenschen, Aryens et Juifs, d’accord, mais ce n’est pas de cela que je veux parler. Je ne veux parler ni de néonazis, ni d’extermination des présumés inférieurs, ni même de mépris affiché avec la robuste franchise de Werner Herzog, mais de la façon dont chacun de nous s’accommode du fait évident que la vie est injuste et les hommes inégaux : plus ou moins beaux, plus ou moins doués, plus ou moins armés pour la lutte. Nietzsche, Limonov et cette instance en nous que j’appelle le fasciste disent d’une même voix : « C’est la réalité, c’est le monde tel qu’il est. » Que dire d’autre ? Ce serait quoi, le contre-pied de cette évidence ? « On sait très bien ce que c’est, répond le fasciste. Ça s’appelle le pieux mensonge, l’angélisme de gauche, le politiquement correct, et c’est plus répandu que la lucidité. » Moi, je dirais : le christianisme. L’idée que, dans le Royaume, qui n’est certainement pas l’au-delà mais la réalité de la réalité, le plus petit est le plus grand. Ou bien l’idée, formulée dans un sutra bouddhiste que m’a fait connaître mon ami Hervé Clerc, selon laquelle « l’homme qui se juge supérieur, inférieur ou même égal à un autre homme ne comprend pas la réalité »”

ChristianityInequalityFascism
Book:Limonov
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“They wanted to be safe. It’s not that much to ask, it feels like. But we don’t have it to begin with, and to get it and keep it, they’d push another kid into the dark. One enclave would push another into the dark for that, too. And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.”

PowerComfortSafetyInequality
Book:A Deadly Education
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