Quotes
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“…white men have a vested interest in upholding the racial hierarchy…”
To people of color like me, the movement toward a more level playing field is occurring at a painfully glacial pace. But to many white men, the change is happening so fast and it all seems so painful! Sociologists Henderson and Herring note that when white men begin to feel the effects of equality (e.g.,…
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“…a cog in the machine of a racist hierarchy.”
In America, racism is a default setting. To do nothing, to go along with the market, to claim innocence or neutrality, is to inevitably be a cog in the machine of racist hierarchy. These two sentences, by Ta-Nehisi Coates in a moving article about Nina Simone, perfectly summarizes why neutrality isn’t an option when it comes…
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“…a black man in the White House and nearly one million black men and women in the Big House.”
Most Americans see inequality – and the racial habits that give it life – as aberrations, ways we fail to live up to the idea of America. But we’re wrong. Inequality and racial habits are part of the American Idea. They are not symptoms of bad, racist people who fail to live up to pristine…
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“If you don’t expect to live past twenty-two…”
Fifty years after King’s visit to Marquette Park, Chicago remains one of the country’s most racially segregated large cities. Redlining is long over, but its legacy is inscribed on the neighborhoods. Some of those areas are poorer than they were at the time of King’s marches. In Englewood, on the South Side, poverty has grown…
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“So there is much to repent for.”
JET: What role do white Christians play in justice for African Americans? Pastor Daniel: That’s a question that I regularly ask my African American friends, co-workers and mentors. And it’s a question that we as white Christians should pay close attention to when answers are proposed. One thing I do feel clearly convicted of is the…
David W. Swanson 