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So You Want to Talk About Race

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Ijeoma Oluo

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“We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army that would sing but not slay. It was an army that would flank but not falter. It was an army to storm the bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround the symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategy and intelligence were eloquently simple dictates of conscience.”

Racial Justice
Author:Martin Luther King Jr.
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“and soon there was this invisible line we couldn't cross like we can't go where the nice places are Can't touch the nice things because everything about us our skin, our faces, our hair, our words, our music will break things will ruin things will make things ugly just by us being there But those white boys didn't care about no lines The world belonged to them including our hood”

Racial JusticeRacial Injustice
Book:Punching the Air
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“Thus through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern. Just as an ambivalent nation freed the slaves a century ago with no plan or program to make their freedom meaningful, the still ambivalent nation in 1954 declared school segregation unconstitutional with no plan or program to make integration real. Just as the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1868 and refused to enforce it, the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1964 and to this day has failed to enforce it in all its dimensions. Just as the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 proclaimed Negro suffrage, only to permit its de facto withdrawal in half the nation, so in 1965 the Voting Rights Law was passed and then permitted to languish with only fractional and halfhearted implementation.”

AmericaRaceDemocracyRacismSlaveryEqualityCivil RightsSegregationRacial JusticeVoting Rights
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Every time somebody does a thing like that to one of us, they say the people who did it were crazy or ignorant. That’s like saying they were drunk. Or constipated. Why isn’t cutting a man’s eyes out, cutting his nuts off, the kind of thing you never get too drunk or ignorant to do? Too crazy to do? Too constipated to do? And more to the point, how come Negroes, the craziest, most ignorant people in America, don’t get that crazy and that ignorant? No. White people are unnatural. As a race they are unnatural. And it takes a strong effort of the will to overcome an unnatural enemy.” “What about the nice ones? Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.” “That just means there are one or two natural ones. But they haven’t been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn’t stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn’t stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on. So will we.”

RacismRacism In AmericaRacial Justice
Book:Song Of Solomon
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“Racism is not the exclusive attribute of young nations where sometimes it hides beneath the rivalries of clans and political parties, with heavy losses for justice and at the risk of civil wars. It is still an obstacle to collaboration and a cause of division and hatred within countries whenever individuals and families see the inviolable rights of the human person held in scorn as they themselves are unjustly subjected to a regime of discrimination because of their race or their color.”

RacismCatholicRacial JusticePaul Vi
Book:On the Development of Peoples: Populorum Progressio
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“Every indignity that comes from the denial of reproductive autonomy can be found in slave women’s lives – the harms of treating women’s wombs as procreative vessels, of policies that pit a mother’s welfare against that of her unborn child, and of government attempts to manipulate women’s child-bearing decisions through threats and bribes.”

PoliticsGenderRacial JusticeReproductive Justice
Book:Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
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