Racism

This is precisely what the weak do everywhere. Through bitter experience they have learned how to exercise extreme care, how to behave so as to reduce the threat of immediate danger from their environment. Fear thus becomes a form of life assurance, making possible the continuation of physical existence with a minimum of active violence.

We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.

Over the course of the twentieth century, Haitians, escaping poverty and unrest, sought refuge in the Bahamas as well. It was and remains a deeply stratified place, sitting at a crossroads, with the global elites and their tax havens at the top and poor Haitians living in shanties at the bottom. It is one of the tragic ironies of global history

As Hamer and her associates prepared to leave, they saw that police officers had surrounded the old school bus in which they had traveled to the courthouse. Hamer later described the scene in vivid detail: “By the time the eighteen of us going in two by two had finished taking the literacy test—now there’s people, mind you, there that day with

Poet David Whyte offered a fresh perspective through his concept of a “conversational identity.” The idea is that we are constantly changing and evolving, always in the middle of something; therefore, our relationships should be fluid, more conversational, where we are not completing the work but rather beginning the conversation. He explained that

Why do we avoid looking at the ways in which we uphold systems of body shame and terror? For the exact same reasons we avoid exploring uncomfortable thoughts about our own bodies and lives: we are in a constant struggle to distinguish our indoctrinated beliefs and behaviors from our true, radically self-loving beings.

Epistemicide is at the heart of colonization, but we cannot decolonize our minds by unknowing modernity. Like it or not, your belonging is dependent on a reclamation of the dismissed ancient and a reconciliation with the dominant modern.

The great impulse of the courtroom seemed to be to put these people where they could not be seen—and not because they were offended at the crimes, unless, indeed, they were offended that the crimes were so petty, but because they did not wish to know that their society could be counted on to produce, probably in greater and greater numbers, a whole