Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there. "

Related Quotes:

" Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums are pulled from the shelves. Home videos of prepubescent siblings in matching pajamas dance across the television screen. "

" The benefits of prison education go beyond lowering recidivism rates and increasing post-release employment. It can also rekindle a sense of purpose and confidence. "

" Our entire lives, we're inundated with media and messaging that tells us that to be incarcerated is to be criminal and to be criminal is to be a bad person. "

" The most important and brave thing someone can do, I think, in the face of dehumanization, is to continue to assert their humanity. "

" There is simply no better way to generate buzz for soccer in your country than having your team in the World Cup. "

" I've been writing poetry seriously since about 2008, 2009. "

" Who has to have a soapbox when all you've ever needed is your voice? "

" Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. "

" Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being. "

" With 'Black Panther,' black artists were provided with the opportunity and agency to create art that captures the full range of their imaginative possibilities. It matters that Chadwick Boseman is the protagonist and is supported by a cast of nearly all black characters. "

" In high school, I made the all-city and all-state soccer teams. "

" Education is a human right - a recognition of dignity that each person should be afforded. "

" In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation. "

" If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is. "

" If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is. "

" Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all. "

" The moral abhorrence of private prisons has been brought to our attention by courageous acts of investigative journalism, illuminating scholarship, and the work of activists who have decried the social stratification brought about by our prison systems. "

" One of the most significant factors contributing to the chasm of educational opportunity is the way that schools are funded. "

" Supporting black professional athletes was taken seriously in my home. "

" If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all. "

" Silence is the residue of fear. "

" I've been a follower of Arsenal Football Club since I was ten years old. "

" When the power of private prisons is diminished, so, too, is their ability to engage in back-door political lobbying that has an impact on public and private prisons alike. "

" In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance. "

" I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy. "

" My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is. "

" There is a solidarity that black people can find in celebrating the athletic success of our own, especially in sports where our existence is sparse. "

" Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality. "

" We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't. "

" The U.S. prison system, over all, disproportionately affects black and brown people, but people of color are overrepresented to a greater degree in private prisons. "