#colon

To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of wish, this lack of interest, this indifference, this automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him, that makes him angry. If a man who speaks pidgin to a man of color or an Arab does not see anything wrong or evil in such behavior, it is because he has never stopped to think. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#identity #race #anger

At midnight on July 1, 1997, Hongkong, the British Crown Colony, will be restored to China. This is not only an event which will be celebrated by patriotic Chinese; any patriotic American should celebrate it as well. ↗

— Robert Trout

#any #british #celebrate #celebrated #china

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English. ↗

— Aravind Adiga

#communication #english #language #communication

When individuals and communities do not govern self, they risk being ruled by external forces that care less about the well-being of the village. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#community #community-development #culture #quotes #social-justice

Gentlemen may cry peace, peace- but there is no peace! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why should we idle here?...I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ↗

— Patrick Henry

#revoultion #death

The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past. ↗

— Barack Obama

#colonialism #history #dreams

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#colonizer #danger #fear #folly #humanity

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#nigeria #south-korea #worldview #experience

The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric. ↗

— Meena Alexander

#writing #experience

A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#faith