#racism

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe. ↗

— Tim Wise

#national-myths #racism #africa

Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?' Jem: 'Yang guizi ... foreign devils. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#chinese #colonialism #foreign #foreign-devils #invasion

All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#racism

When youre sharing a foxhole with another man, you don't worry about what color he is, just whether or not he will protect your back ↗

— Lee Benson

#war #racism

Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture. ↗

— Tim Wise

#culture #inequities #justice #organizing #racism

As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#racism

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#hispanic-american #identity #latina #latina-american #latino-american

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#racism #racism

People who insist on dividing the world into 'Us' and 'Them' never contemplate that they may be someone else's 'Them'. ↗

— Ray Davis

#prejudice #racism #racism