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Quote by Alicia Garza

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Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

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Alicia Garza

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“When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What we've actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless. Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn't have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures, and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations. White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obama's ascent to the White House. For every action of African American advancements, there's a reaction, a backlash.”

RaceRacismRageReactionsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesBacklash
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“All of this tells us that the white backlash is nothing new. White America has been backlashing on the fundamental God-given and human rights of Negro Americans for more than three hundred years. With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial justice.”

AmericaJusticeRaceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesBacklashRacial Justice
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“Historically, whenever Black people and people of color made progress in America, the demons of white rage would rise with a fury to choke and wrestle this country back to 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It was inevitable that Obama's election would unleash and invigorate the same malevolent forces that had always existed and corrupted America's promise for the rest of us. I knew it. Many people of color knew it and lived it. Even Obama knew it.”

AmericaRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksObamaBacklashBarack ObamaPeople Of Color
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“Every finger in the room Is pointing at me I wanna spit in their faces Then I get afraid of what that could bring I got a bowling ball in my stomach I got a desert in my mouth Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets Looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets I've been raising up my hands Drive another nail in Just what God needs One more victim”

LyricsCrucifyTori Amos
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