Quotes About Injustice

Being fetishized because of my skin? I've definitely encountered that wall of people.

Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.

The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that.

We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?

I think it's impossible to be a young black male from the South, born to an era I was born in, and not have a clear sense of what race really means in the country.

People don't know that the very reason the police were made was to oversee slaves; they would be called overseers, and if a slave got out of line or tried to break away and escape, these were the people to hold them in and bring them back.

Debemos enseñar a los curas que amenazan y asustan a sus feligreses con el fuego eterno que en realidad no hay otro infierno que este, el que sufrimos nosotros, con la miseria, los salarios exiguos, humillantes, las condiciones de trabajo y las jornadas agotadoras, con la enfermedad de nuestros hijos y con la falta de comida y medicinas.

Ella conocía el rigor de la existencia, y sabía que las personas respondían más allá incluso de donde era previsible o de donde se pudiera sostener que era soportable. Injusticias, palizas, violaciones, humillaciones... ¡crueldad!, y sin embargo la propia vida, instintivamente, se agarraba con tenacidad a la más mortecina de las luces.

En realidad no hay otro infierno que este, el que sufrimos nosotros, con la miseria, los salarios exiguos, humillantes, las condiciones de trabajo y las jornadas agotadoras, con la enfermedad de nuestros hijos y con la falta de comida y medicinas.

Los esclavos, más que nadie, conocemos el arte de la hipocresía.

I knew that people lived badly, remembered the barracks of the Khamovniki brewery, had seen flophouses, all-night cafés, drunkards, cruel and ignorant people, prison. But all that had been from the outside, and in the courtroom I caught a glimpse of people's hearts.

But in the secret history of anger--one man's silence / lives in the bodies of others.

The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip. The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like the body of a boy.

How could anyone mistake Mom for white? Mom was a proud black woman, the proudest I knew. She hated us having to take welfare food, hated accepting anything we needed but did not earn. We had a picture of Marcus Garvey on the living-room wall, talking about going back to Africa, talking about the power of blackness and the strength of the Negro heart. I couldn't imagine looking at Mom and not seeing that.

The government men dragged Mom out of the house. They held her by the elbows and ankles and shoulders and thighs, their harsh, meaty hands digging into her softness. She flailed against their touch, but they overpowered her with ease, the way white men always know how to do.

I know without knowing: the man in that tree was a proud black man. Uppity, some might say. Out of his place, some might say. Too smart for his own good. I can hear the words, see those pink lips moving, spitting the words that promised his death. His back never bent underneath it, and they hated that most. I know plenty.

I knew what it meant. Pap didn't have an accident. He died for being a proud black man. He died because someone killed him. Someone who was going to get away with it.

I couldn't ever be more than that in Lansing. Can't ever be more anyplace, it turns out, as long as I wear this brown skin. I used to think things were different, because Papa used to tell me stories about all the great things I could be and could do. But now I understand. Now I know they were just stories. Just ideas in his head.

I'm not afraid...I'm awake to the way they think now...They have to have us in a box. They have to have us know they could shoot us. At any time.

There are no historic firsts, no grand gestures, no monuments or museums that undo generations of exclusions under law, policy, and practice, or that stop the expulsion. It makes me want to holler. Tell the truth. What is this symbolic republic?

And yes, slavery was abolished, Jim Crow is over, but the prisons, the persistence of poverty, are constant reminders of how the past made the present.

The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, "Never again!" But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late?

People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must.

Certain folks start playing Sindh Card despite having ravaged the life of the common Sindhi.