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The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions

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Shawn Davis

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“For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people.”

ChangeLeadershipPolitical Stability
Book:Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
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“As more Blacks broke free from the discriminatory barriers, society could find more ways to ignore the barriers themselves, and could even argue that something else was holding Black people back. With every Black first, the blame shifted to those Black people who failed to break away....If some could break away, the logic went, then all could, if they worked hard enough. Racist logic didn’t have to be logical; it just had to make common sense.”

RacismRacist Ideas
Book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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“Ironically, the actual “key to much in the Negro world” may have been the very opposite of Glazier’s formulation - the Negro may have been taking too much responsibility for the Negro’s problems, and therefore not doing enough to force the “white world” to end the discriminatory sources of the problems. Elite Blacks, raised on the strategy of uplift suasion and its racist conviction that every Negro represented the race - and therefore that the behavior of every single Black person was partially (or totally) responsible for racist ideas - had long policed each other. They had also policed the masses and the media portrayals of Blacks in their efforts to ensure that every single Black person presented himself or herself admirably before White Americans. They operated on the assumption that every single action before White America either confirmed or defied stereotypes, either helped or harmed the Negro race.”

RacismRacist IdeasUplift Suasion
Book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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“In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush-covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path, being careful to sidle at a couple of points where the oily, green-shading-to-maroon leaves of poison ivy were unmistakable... There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts... If I ever give you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream.”

LifeHistoryRacisim
Book:11/22/63
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“You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?” “Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?” “He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said. Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does.”

HumorCivil WarYankeesRebelsConfederates
Book:Fort Pillow
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