Morgan Jerkins > Quotes

“We cannot come together if we do not recognize our differences first. These differences are best articulated when women of color occupy the center of the discourse while white women remain silent, actively listen, and do not try to reinforce supremacy by inserting themselves in the middle of the discussion.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“When there is no equality there can not be equivalency.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“In my experience, white people are the only ones who purport to advance equality through the erasure or rejection of marginalized people’s identities, which signals to me that they have fooled themselves into believing that they are “unraced.” This belief is false, because it is based on the idea that whiteness is the human standard and that furthermore, by virtue of them being white, they are the arbiters of humanity.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“There is no one way to be black. Blackness is not a monolith and you are not someone who is lost in the abiss of uniformity. Blackness is a kelidoscope where, if you look closely, you will see many colorful patterns within the many reflections in the mirror. There is no one way to be black.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“White people think that it is a compliment when they do not 'see' you as a black person.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“Are white people only able to talk to me if they’ve trained their minds not to see me as black? Is the only path to acceptance not breaking the fantasy that white people have of everyone’s equality? I’ve never thought I was anything but human. My black womanhood does not cancel out my humanity. These are not facts that repel each other. Physiologically, of course, we are all human. Socially, we dehumanize people of color daily. We judge their clothes, speech, hair, and education level as criteria for whether they have earned the right to be treated with common decency. We use these same criteria to judge if they deserve to die at the hands of law enforcement, or men like George Zimmerman. Because the question that white people are asking is not Why can’t we all be human?, but Why can’t you be like us?”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“I was never taught that the world would nurture me, so I perfected the ways of hiding.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“I would subject myself a black man's harassment a thousand times over rather than watch his face hit the pavement with a police officer's weight on his back. That's not justice. That is a betrayal.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“Plenty more. A whole lotta Black women been getting sick, losing babies, and everything—and they blame it all on those Melancons. I don’t believe in correlation actually implying causation. But it does make you wonder who they are giving the caul to if not the women of this neighborhood.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“I thought gangs were filled with members who were often unemployed and shunned from society. I never asked the heavier questions, like how did this unemployment begin and why has society shunned them in the first place? I thought gang members killed recklessly and that anyone who joined them was bloodthirsty. But”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“Despite the increasing rigor with which scholars are approaching slavery and erotics, the pervasiveness of intellectual skepticism reflects how deeply entrenched narratives of violation, violence, and trauma are to our understanding of black female sexuality. Emphasizing subjugation, exploitation, and dehumanization, however, cannot preclude fuller incorporation of pleasure and erotic possibility in the lives of enslaved black women. Sex acts happened often during slavery. Political goals of the moment do not rewrite the sexual lives, desires, and choices of enslaved and free women of color, but they can obscure those lives to our detriment. . . . To search for this in chattel slavery by interrogating these possibilities . . . does not lessen the traumatic, terrorizing, and horrific nature of slavery. Such inquiries allow for the interior lives and erotic subjectivities of enslaved blacks to matter.6”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“She made enough money to take care of herself but not enough to shift anything in her favor, and she didn’t trust a single one of those people. No matter how much they smiled in her face or placed a hand on the small of her back, she was still their shining example of the meritocratic myth, and if she thought about it too long, she’d lose focus.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“As the first failed pregnancies turned into several, people stopped asking though she never stopped announcing, hopeful that collective faith would carry her flailing belief in the power of her body, and in God’s will. Eventually, she lost count of how many children abandoned her after the first heartbeat, or how many times she’d wake up with blood soaking her backside.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“The Lowcountry is a two-hundred-mile stretch of land that spans the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, along with the Sea Islands.9 It is believed that over half of the 388,000 Africans brought to the lands that became the United States first arrived in the Lowcountry.10 According to the International African American Museum, 80 percent of African Americans can trace an ancestor who set foot onto a Charleston dock first.11 Despite this rich history, I had heard of Gullah people only twice in my life—on Nickelodeon’s 1990s children’s television show Gullah Gullah Island and from a close friend whose late grandmother was Gullah. The Gullah Geechee people are the oldest sub-ethnic group of African Americans.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“So white hunters used slave babies as bait to trap alligators, a legend much disputed until it was unfortunately confirmed to be true.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“In grade school, I was never taught about the different social milieus that black people occupied in nineteenth-century America and earlier, and I was definitely never taught that free black people existed prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“You two shouldn’t be eating all that junk. It’s heavy in calories and saturated fats, and it can mess with your cholesterol.” “Thank you for the public service announcement,” Denise said sarcastically.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“And then in 1830, when Jackson was president, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which forced these tribes to move west of the Mississippi into what is now known as Oklahoma. The brutal journey they took is known as the Trail of Tears. A little-known fact about the Trail of Tears—one I never learned in grade school—was that both free blacks and enslaved blacks accompanied the Five Civilized Tribes on this journey.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“Why the hell would we bring weapons into a church anyway? We aren’t loner white boys.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“Why aren’t we fighting for the Black boys getting gunned down in the streets by police and trigger-happy white folk? Why aren’t we fighting for people stuck in Rikers waiting for trial for just having”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“And we all have (often older) family members who are “too far gone” on certain issues, who have not been swayed by any kind of new argument since the Kennedy administration. Accepting this is a resignation and an act of self-preservation in order to retain our peace and sanity by not expending intellectual and emotional labor on those who haven’t asked for it.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“The United States government encouraged the Five Civilized Tribes to participate in chattel slavery for two reasons: (1) to interbreed the native population with their white fellow slave owners, diluting Indians’ undesirable “primitive” traits, and (2) more important, to dissuade the Native Americans from protecting runaway slaves.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“Your daughter? Your daughter? You didn’t want a daughter, remember? You wanted to get rid of her, and I helped you do that so you could graduate from college and go on to law school. Everything worked out. Why are you purposely trying to throw a wrench in your own plans?”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“black people could not provide documentation that they were legally free, as in the famous case of Solomon Northup recounted in Northup’s book 12 Years a Slave, and if they were captured, they were denied rights to a trial.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots

“I was not in a country where my ancestors had been enslaved. I was not stared at when I walked through different neighborhoods either in the day or the evening, no waitress gave me poor service, no one made any snide remarks about my body, and I never heard a racial slur. In short, I was free.”
― Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

“With Hallow as the succcessor, she saw to it that the family was made more aware of what was happening in the neighborhood, but her family’s interest could not be aroused. They were reluctant to get involved because they were relieved that their family name was not at the center of the drama. So Hallow tried another route.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“She completed the most prestigious internships and clerkships, mingled and hobnobbed with Connecticut blue bloods, and sublimated her vengeance toward the Melancon family to extreme discipline that put her on the fast track to becoming one of the biggest rising stars in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. She blew through all the low”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“We’ve had so many white people coming in and out of here, you would think it was a slave auction.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“Maman was not one for painful emotions. She either redirected her attention to the upkeep of the home or pulled from a blunt to numb the edges of her most difficult memories. But lately in her old age, she couldn’t control her own mental faculties as much as she wanted.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby

“But don’t get involved with those people. Us women selling parts of our bodies is just unnatural. Slavery is over! They just ain’t get the memo!” Denise cackled.”
― Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby