Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Anti-black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower black communities. "

Related Quotes:

" Many of the concessions that leading Democrats seem willing to make - from cutting diversity visas to chipping away at family visas - would be made on the backs of black immigrants, people from Africa and the Caribbean who deserve these policies to remain intact as some of the few legal tools they have to immigrate to this country. "

Opal Tometi

Legal

People

Family

" Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade. "

" The U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the plight of displaced Haitians and maintaining inhumane practices of neglect, disrespect, and violence amounts to a gross violation of human rights. "

" Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives. "

" Black Lives Matter has been viral, and people are taking it, appropriating it, and using it however they see fit. "

" I have two younger brothers, and I know my parents have spoken to them about driving and interacting with police. They didn't have those conversations with me, but they did have conversations about being exceptional black people. "

Opal Tometi

People

Parents

" We came in as organizers before creating the Black Lives Matter network and project, and we are still organizers, strategists, political thinkers, and philosophers, so we actually have a lot ideas and a lot of really thought out strategies. "

" We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter. "

" My parents migrated to Phoenix, AZ, in the '80s, and I watched them work tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings as they encouraged us to pursue our dreams. "

Opal Tometi

Phoenix

Work

" We created #BlackLivesMatter. We created a platform. We used our social media presence online in order to forward a conversation about what is taking place in black communities. "

" We deserve to live in a world where there's no impunity, but beyond this question of impunity, there are all these structures that are actually doing a disservice to our people. "

" The black immigrant experience in the U.S. must be understood not in contrast to the African American experience but as an integral part of it. "

" Trump's racism has clearly driven his policy decisions during his first year in office - from his Muslim ban and his despicable treatment of DREAMers to his ruthless ramp-up of immigration raids and the callous termination of protections for Haitians and Salvadorans who fled natural disaster and violence. "

" To me and to a number of other activists from the U.S., we believe that the human rights movement has to evolve and understand the global implications of structural racism. This means engaging the United Nations and a variety of other human rights bodies. "

" I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don't live and we don't fight for one specific struggle. "

" We have to start imagining a new reality - this will mean fewer police and more social workers and teachers. This will mean creating more economic possibilities and investment that preserves and does not displace our communities. "

" I challenge us all to have the courage of our convictions to fight for a fair, justice and inclusive society. "

" As a community organizer who holds a degree in history, I understand the fascination with history. However, there is a tendency for many of us to get engrossed in the recounting of our history, which often amounts to purely intellectual activity without material action. "

" Get involved in your neighborhood. That's how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement. "

" Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case. "

" Black people, we are fully deserving of the room and space to fully express our humanity. This is what Black Lives Matter is truly about. "

" President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation. "

" There are always groups on campus that are doing amazing things. I know when I was in college, I was a student at the University of Arizona, working on my bachelor's in history, and I got involved with a number of different groups that were connected to different social justice issues that I cared about. "

" We can't continue to sit on our hands and sit idly by as people are being brutalized, disenfranchised, and left out of the system. "

" We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America. "

" The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees. "

" Implicit bias - our subconscious associations of race - permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it. "

" Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy. "

" Due to broken windows policing, the following interactions can lead to tickets, arrests and summonses, warrants if tickets go unpaid and, in some cases, violence: jaywalking, sleeping on a park bench, spitting, putting your feet up on the subway, and more. "

" What we are oftentimes reminding people of is the fact that the history of police in the U.S. was that they were slave patrols. They were quite literally created in order to capture enslaved Africans. "