Jill Nelson > Quotes

“When you're younger you're so happy to get some good loving you convince yourself you're in love, can't live with out it, and chase the dick like a crack addict after the pipe, or chase the bad sex hoping something happened to the man over night and the next time it'll be good.”
― Jill Nelson, Sexual Healing

“Standing on a street corner in Manhattan two days after Diallo's murder, having just come from a meeting of concerned citizens to plan an organized response, I was so filled with frustration and sorrow that I turned to the woman beside me waiting for the light to change and asked 'What do you think about the cops shooting that man forty-one-times?'

She looked startled, confused--could she not feel the palpable rage, pain, and fear that pulsed through the black veins of this city and other cities across the nation?

'I don't know. I have to wait until all the facts are in. I'm sure they had a reason,' she finally responded.

Perhaps she saw the disgust and disappointment on my face. Stepping off the curb as the light turned green, she added, 'I mean, he must have done something.”
― Jill Nelson, Police Brutality: An Anthology

“The notion of the 'Black male predator' is so historically rooted in the American consciousness that we have come to accept the brutalization and murder of citizens by the police as an acceptable method of law enforcement. The assumption is that Black men are the bad guys, the police are the good guys, and if the police killed someone it must have been for a good reason. They must have done something.”
― Jill Nelson, Police Brutality: An Anthology

“The thing that I find so seductive about liquor is that it's legal, and thus subject to quality control. Unlike smoke or dope, you don't have to risk arrest, go into sleazy neighborhoods, deal with a criminal element, or become part of a criminal element to get a drink. You also always get what you pay for. So, unless you're drooling, drunkenly lascivious, or passed out, no one ever has to know that you've had too much, that you're an alcoholic--not even you.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“My mammying days are over.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“I feel I owe my daughter stability, bourgeoisdom, charge accounts at Woodies, a chance to join the mainstream. I will be the Cosmo mom, the queen of having it all, and my daughter a Cosby clone. For $50,000 smackeroos, how bad could it be?”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“Now, I am just tired of the lines, the silence, the circles of bullshit. I want out of my closets.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“It is a latter-day version of passing, in which the thing to be disguised is not the color of one's skin, but one's corporate affiliation. If the early 1970s was a time when black people decided to "join the system and change it from within," by the late 1980s some of us have realized that the system isn't changing, we are--and not necessarily for the better.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“Such public outrage and judicial action appears to demand a specific set of circumstances. The victims must have a spotless record. The must not be involved in any altercation that might attract the police. Ideally they should not drink or smoke and should be straight and devout. The circumstances of their abuse and demise must be especially heinous. Disturbingly, we seem more able to respond to victims who, while Black, are not African American. Yet even when these circumstances are in place, the deaths at the hands of the police will likely go largely unnoticed and unpunished.”
― Jill Nelson, Police Brutality: An Anthology

“Some people who "go crazy" simply get tired, disgusted with life and with themselves, and decide to let go. It's a psychological version of Zen submission, except instead of entering an ashram or going to meditate in the Himalayas, they retreat inside themselves. It's not that I cannot cope. I simply no longer want to.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“When I reached this policeman in the street, he hit me over the head with his club...I wanted to get protection, but instead the cops hit me...I was afraid to run, because I knew if I did they would hit me again.

Harry Reed's affidavit is dated August 22, 1900. And little has changed in a century.”
― Jill Nelson, Police Brutality: An Anthology

“I don't give a goddamn how much they're paying you, it's not enough. They'll buy you and try to steal your soul, too. You're too good for them, too good. Don't sell yourself cheap.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“I am living a fantasy, a dream. I have gambled on living by the word, not the sword, and won.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience

“He seems to think that since she's a white feminist and I'm a black woman, we are organically simpatico.”
― Jill Nelson, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience