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Quote by Heather McGhee

“We've got to get on the same page before we can turn it. We've tried a do-it-yourself approach to writing the racial narrative about America, but the forces selling denial, ignorance, and projection have succeeded in robbing us of our own shared history--both the pain and the resilience. It's time to tell the truth, with a nationwide process that enrolls all of us in setting the facts straight so that we can move forward with a new story, together.”

Quote by Heather McGhee

Book:The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
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The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

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Heather McGhee

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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”

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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Book:On the Development of Peoples: Populorum Progressio
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