Tagged: segregation

“[I]f…African Americans will not be compensated for the massive wrongs and social injuries inflicted upon them by their government during and after slavery, then there is no chance that America can solve its racial problems.”

Source: Randall Robinson. The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. 2001.

“Born in the late 19th century, Charles Hamilton Houston was a valedictorian of Amherst College at the age of 19, a U.S. Army veteran of World War I, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the first African American elected to the Harvard Law Review. He received an advanced law degree, an S.J.D., from Harvard Law School, and a doctorate of civil law from the University of Madrid. He was a teacher and later dean of Howard Law School, where he gathered a mass of top black lawyers and law professors and relentlessly instructed countless graduates of Howard Law School and future Brown litigators. Of the thirty lawyers who served as plaintiffs’ counsel in Brown, Thurgood Marshall noted that all but two were taught by Houston. He was special counsel to the NAACP and litigated several of its cases. In this role, he extensively researched segregation and carefully strategized its downfall.”

Source: Charles J. Olgetree. From Dred Scott to Obama. pg. 16. 2009.

“Jim Crow, a caricature of a black man created by a white minstrel in 1828 to entertain white crowds, had, by late in the century, come to symbolize a systematic political, legal, and social repression of African Americans. Blacks were subjected to judicially and politically sanctioned segregation, discrimination, and violence. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, a professor of history at Yale University, has called the system one of white supremacy — ‘a system that was established both through legislation and the courts, and through custom. It could mean anything from being unable to vote, to being segregated, to being lynched. It was part and parcel of a system of white supremacy. Sort of like we use the word apartheid as a codeword to describe a certain kind of white supremacy.'”

Source: Charles J. Ogletree. From Dred Scott to Obama. pg. 14. 2009.

“Let me assure you that there is no such thing as a black racist. There is no such thing. ‘Black racism’ and ‘reverse racism’ are terms that were developed by intellectual white thinktanks in political circles to get you as African young people to feel guilty about discussing what has happened to you as African people in America. So when you start to discuss slavery, or the effects of slavery, or the effects of 500 years of domination, what they do is say, “Oh, you’re a racist.” When you react to the ugly things that they do or say to us, they say, “Oh, you’re a racist.” That is to get you to feel guilty about discussing, or organizing, or taking issue with the condition of African people in this country.” — Sister Souljah

Source: From a lecture titled “We Are At War” at Cheney State University in 1994. http://www.blackpast.org/1994-sister-souljah-we-are-war.

“In Wisconsin, the black unemployment rate was nearly 20 percent last year, and 26 states and Washington, DC saw double-digit unemployment rates for their black residents. The highest the white rate reached in any state, on the other hand, was 7 percent in Nevada.”

Source: Bryce Covert. “Black America Is Still In A Deep Recession.” Think Progress. March 26, 2015. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/03/26/3639201/black-unemployment-recession/

“The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power…But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”

Source: Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (Justice John Harlan dissenting)

“It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence, we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity — and shape our lives accordingly. I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes.” — Albert Einstein

Here’s a fuller excerpt from Einstein’s 1946 article in Pageant titled “The Negro Question”:

A large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition — besides inherited aptitudes and qualities — which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small compared with the powerful influence of tradition is the influence of our conscious thought upon our conduct and convictions.

It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence, we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity — and shape our lives accordingly.

I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes.

What, however, can the man of good will do to combat the deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed and must watch lest his children become influenced by this racial bias.

I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed. But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of a good cause.

Source: Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor. Einstein On Race and Racism. pg. 141. 2005.

“For [Paul] Robeson, the taste of irony may have been bitter-sweet, given the Jim Crow conditions his cousins, friends, and others still faced in Princeton’s black community. ‘It means so little when a man like me wins some success,’ he told a reporter from Winconsin. ‘Where is the benefit when a small class of Negroes makes money and can live well? It may all be encouraging, but it has no deeper significance. I feel this way because I have cousins who can neither read nor write. I have had a chance. They have not. That is the only difference.'”

Source: Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor. Einstein On Race and Racism. pg. 58. 2005.

“When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon’s founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.”

I was never taught this good old American history fact in school and I graduated with my Masters in 2008…

Source: Matt Novak. “Oregon Was Founded As A Racist Utopia.” Gizmodo. January 21, 2015. http://gizmodo.com/oregon-was-founded-as-a-racist-utopia-1539567040.

“Calling race a ‘social construct’ does not mean that the biological ancestry — and specifically West African ancestry — of African Americans is mythical. It also doesn’t mean that my ancestry has no actual implications…And in the future, it may mean even more. Ancestry — where my great-great-great-great grandparents are from — is a fact. What you call people with that particular ancestry is not. It changes depending on where you are in the world, when you are there, and who has power.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Source: Ta-Nehisi Coates. “The Social Construction of Race.” The Atlantic. May 17, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-social-construction-of-race/275974/.