A friend of mine asked me recently, was I gonna go see the new Batman movie with him. It’s just I don’t respect the concept of Batman because of what I understand about politics now… I’mma lay it out for you: rich dude owns a corporation. Has state of the art equipment, and he uses this to beat up on street level crime. He doesn’t mess with the industrialists, or the super capitalists, or the Murdochs, or the Trumps. He really just fuck with the person that’s just on the corner. Batman is a conservative’s wet dream. Fuck Batman.
But what is now encompassed by the one word “school” are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation’s governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.
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Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities
The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.
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Bell Hooks: Ain’t I A Woman:Black Women and Feminism
In recent years when young white males, especially those who have class privilege, violently act out, even killing, psychological issues are explored as possible expanations. Yet when black males act out the message mass media sends is that they are “inherently” evil, flawed beyond repair.
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bell hooks, We Real Cool, p. 92
Things girls say about the show Girls.
I will give you an example of how race affects my life. I live in a place called Alpine, New Jersey. Live in Alpine, New Jersey, right? My house costs millions of dollars. In my neighborhood, there are four black people. Hundreds of houses, four black people. Who are these black people? Well, there’s me, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and Eddie Murphy. Only black people in the whole neighborhood. So let’s break it down, let’s break it down: me, I’m a decent comedian. I’m a’ight. Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the white man who lives next door to me does for a living? He’s a fucking dentist! He ain’t the best dentist in the world…he ain’t going to the dental hall of fame…he don’t get plaques for getting rid of plaque. He’s just a yank-your-tooth-out dentist. See, the black man gotta fly to get to somethin’ the white man can walk to.
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Chris Rock
see, this is something that aforementioned idiot should listen to. if you think racial equality exists because we have the same purported opportunity to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, ask if we even started at the same point, when people of color didn’t even have the same opportunities to set up a foundation for the life of this generation. you think your white grandparents got the same jobs as a person of color’s grandparents, so that they could retire and you would know they’d have access to healthcare? you think your white family was offered the same rates (or even chances) for home loans as a family of color’s so that you didn’t have to work a job through high school to meet rent? you think that your mother worrying if you’re going to get into a good college is hard enough? what if on top of that, your mother also had to worry that you might get gunned down in the street because of the color of your skin?
i’m sorry buddy, but you are wrong, and chris rock is so, so right.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail
