Gary Younge > Quotes

“Studs Terkel was waiting for a number 146 bus alongside two well-groomed business types. "This was before the term yuppie was used," he explains. "But that was what they were. He was in Brooks Brothers and Gucci shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal under his arm. She was a looker. I mean stunning - Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus and carrying Vanity Fair."

Terkel, who is 95, has long been a Chicago icon, every bit as accessible and integral to the cultural life of the Windy City as Susan Sontag was to New York. He had shared the bus stop with this couple for several mornings but they had always failed to acknowledge him. "It hurts my ego," he quips. "But this morning the bus was late and I thought, this is my chance." The rest of the story is his.

"I say, 'Labour Day is coming up.' Well, it was the wrong thing to say. He looks toward me with a look of such contempt it's like Noel Coward has just spotted a bug on his collar. He says, 'We despise unions.' I thought, oooooh. The bus is still late. I've got a winner here. Suddenly I'm the ancient mariner and I fix him with my glittering eye. 'How many hours a day do you work?' I ask. He says, 'Eight.' 'How comes you don't work 18 hours a day like your great-great-grandfather did? You know why? Because four guys got hanged in Chicago in 1886 fighting for the eight-hour day ... For you.”
― Gary Younge

“Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened, "writes Leovy in Ghettoside. "Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“But they can explain a great deal. The circumstances into which people are born and the range of opportunities to which they are exposed shape both the choices available to them and the process by which they make those choices even if they, ultimately, still make the choice. I have yet to meet anyone who denies that individuals have free will. But I also have yet to meet anyone who makes a convincing argument that circumstances don’t shape what you can do with that will.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“So long as you have a society with a lot of guns- and America has more guns per capita than any other county in the world- children will be at risk of being shot. The questions are how much risk, and what, if anything, is being done to minimize it? If one thinks of various ways in which commonplace items, from car seats to medicine bottle tops, have been childproofed, it's clear that society's general desire has been to eliminate as many potential dangers from children as possible, even when the number of those who might be harmed is relatively small. If one child's death is preventable, then the proper question isn't "Why should we do this" but rather "Why shouldn't we?" It would be strange for that principle to apple to everything but guns.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“So long as you have a society with a lot of guns- and America has more guns per capita than any other county in the world- children will be at risk of being shot. The questions are how much risk, and what, if anything, is being done to minimize it? If one thinks of various ways in which commonplace items, from car seats to medicine bottle tops, have been childproofed, it's clear that society's general desire has been to eliminate as many potential dangers from children as possible, even when the number of those who might be harmed is relatively small. If one child's death is preventable, then the proper question isn't "Why should we do this" but rather "Why shouldn't we?" It would be strange for that principle to apply to everything but guns.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“My aim here is to put a human face—a child’s face—on the “collateral damage” of gun violence in America.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“Herein lies one of the most tragic elements to emerge from my research: that every black parent of a teenage child I spoke to had factored in the possibility that this might happen to their kid. Indeed,”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“À ceux que l’on abat tous les jours dans des endroits et des circonstances variés, il manque la masse critique et la dimension tragique qui attirent les médias nationaux à la manière des tueries dans les écoles et les églises. Loin de mériter l’attention médiatique, ces coups du sort quotidiens ne sont qu’une mort tout à fait banale. C’est un bruit blanc maintenu suffisamment bas pour que le pays entier puisse poursuivre tranquillement ses occupations : c’est une confluence entre culture, politique et économie qui garantit chaque jour à plusieurs enfants américains de sortir de leur lit mais de ne jamais s’y recoucher, tandis que le reste de la nation dormira sur ses deux oreilles.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“In more than half of American homes where there are both children and firearms, according to a 2000 study, the weapons are in an unlocked place, and in more than 40 percent of homes, guns without a trigger lock are in an unlocked place. Almost three-quarters of children under the age of ten who live in homes with guns say they know where the guns are. A 2005 study showed that more than 1.69 million children and youth under eighteen live in homes with weapons that are loaded and unlocked. According to a Department of Education study, 65% of school shootings between 1974 and 2000 were carried out with a gun from the attacker's home or the home of a relative. And the laws, it seems, are effective. One study indicated that in the twelve states where child-access prevention laws were on the books for at least one year, unintentional gun deaths fell by 23 percent.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“To Jaden, Kenneth, Stanley, Pedro, Tyler, Edwin, Samuel, Taishan, Gerry and Justin. For who you were and who you might have been.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“This is not a book about race, though the disproportionate number of those who fell that day were black, and certain racial themes are unavoidable. It is not a book that sets out to compare the United States unfavorably with Britain, though it is written by a Briton to whom gun culture is alien. Finally, it is not a book about gun control; it is a book made possible by the absence of gun control.”
― Gary Younge

“When children are demonised by the newspapers, they are often described as feral,’ wrote George Monbiot in the Guardian.6 ‘But feral is what children should be: it means released from captivity or domestication. Those who live in crowded flats, surrounded by concrete, mown grass and other people’s property, cannot escape their captivity without breaking the law. Games and explorations that are seen as healthy in the countryside are criminalised in the cities. Children who have never visited the countryside live under constant restraint.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America

“Michael Brown, the hapless director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, responded, “We’re seeing people that we didn’t know exist.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“Firearms are the leading source of death among black children under the age of nineteen and the second leading cause of death for all children of the same age group, after car accidents.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“The development of social media, citizen journalism, and new technology has made it more difficult for the established media to simply ignore gun deaths in certain areas.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“of one California Highway Patrol officer quoted in the book, “It’s sheer numbers.… You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“One should be cautious when drawing conclusions about people's characters from social media. On Facebook, nobody's children cry, nobody's marriage is imperilled, and everyone has beautiful days under the bluest of skies. These are performance platforms where we present versions of ourselves that are curated for public consumption.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

“Les Américains ne sont pas plus violents par nature que n’importe quel autre peuple. Si leur société est aussi mortelle, c’est parce que les armes y sont très largement disponibles.”
― Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives