D. Watkins > Quotes

“The streets provide an education in everything that many of these schools don’t, such as survival skills, kinship, moneymaking opportunities, and love. A love that is absent from the cold hallways of schools such as the ones Butta, I, and millions of other African Americans attend or attended. Butta’s school has been shut down, along”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Even though I was born in America, and my ancestors built its infrastructure for free, I’m not a part of the “Our” when they sing, “Our flag was still there!” I feel like the “Our” doesn’t include blacks, most women, gays, trans, and poor people of all colors. And, sadly, our nation reminds us every day. Some may reject the anthem because Francis Scott Key sang for freedom while enslaving blacks. His hatred even bled into the lyrics of the elongated version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” you won’t hear at a sporting event. The third stanza reads: No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave That line was basically a shot at slaves who agreed to fight with the British during the War of 1812 in exchange for their freedom.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“My city is gone, my history depleted, ruined, and undocumented. I don’t know this new Baltimore, it’s alien to me. Baltimore is Brooklyn and DC now. No, Baltimore is Chicago or New Orleans or any place where yuppie interests make black neighborhoods shrink like washed sweaters. A place where black history is bulldozed and replaced with Starbucks, Chipotles, and dog parks.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Poverty, injustice, and reading comprehension issues go hand in hand,”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“If you are in a privileged group, and you want to help oppressed people, one of the best things you can do is teach other people in your privileged group. As a person of privilege, you do not have to actually face the oppression, so you have time to teach. Oppressed people do not have the energy to teach everyone about the oppression they have to live through every day.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Despite your skin color, Trump fan, you probably have more in common with the minorities you’re demonizing than the candidate you’re cheering. Number”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“But in 2014, it feels the same as Bush, or Clinton, or any other president. The rich are copping new boats, and we still are using the oven to heat up our houses in the winter, while eating our cereal with forks to preserve milk. America still feels like America, a place where you have to pay to play, any- and everywhere, even here at our broke-ass card game. W”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Two taps on the door, it opened, and the gang was all there—four disenfranchised African Americans posted up in a 9-by-11 prison-size tenement, one of those spots where you enter the front door, take a half-step and land in the yard. I call us disenfranchised, because Obama’s selfie with some random lady or the whole selfie movement in general is more important than we are and the conditions where we dwell. Surprisingly,”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Cops never fucked with David Simon while he was filming The Wire, and dudes who rock out at that rock club The Crown sing about drugs and addiction weekly, but Moose can’t do the same? Martin Scorsese can, but Moose can’t? Can you not be an artist if you’ve dealt heroin? If you’re a felon? If you’ve owned guns? So now being black and from the ghetto bars you from artistic expression?”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“But we all have a moral obligation to set things right. We are all responsible for challenging the system and forcing it to create a fair learning experience for all students because we are dealing with more than just a failed school system or a broken home, or even millions of broken homes; we are dealing with failure on a historic scale, spanning hundreds of years. Acknowledging that we face this kind of epic failure is the first step in bringing about real change. That's a big challenge in the United States, where accepting failure has never been our strength.”
― D. Watkins

“These, of course, can be important markers in attempts to chart the public and private institutional underpinnings of the social crises in communities across Baltimore, but they are often highlighted at the expense of locating the humor, beauty, history, community, and humanness of Black Baltimore. In this sense, Devin Allen is a gift.”
― D. Watkins, A Beautiful Ghetto

“They spend hours aimlessly scrolling, absorbing fake and altered realities, praising the lives of celebrities when they could be enjoying real life, participating in rich discussions, and learning.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“What the fuck is a selfie?” said Miss Sheryl. “When a stupid person with a smartphone flicks themselves and looks at it,” I said to the room. She replied with a raised eyebrow, “Oh?” It’s amazing how the news seems so instant to most from my generation—with our iPhones, Wi-Fi, tablets, and iPads—but actually it isn’t. The idea of information being class-based as well became evident to me when I watched my friends talk about a weeks-old story as if it happened yesterday. Miss”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“The police officers in Baltimore, as in many places in the country with dense black populations, are out of control and have been out of control. One of the major reasons is that many Baltimore police officers don’t live in Baltimore City; some don’t even live in Maryland. Many don’t know or care about the citizens of the communities they police, which is why they can come in, beat us, and kill us without a sign of grief or empathy.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Privileged groups should stop expecting oppressed groups to teach them. We’re busy being oppressed.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America

“...the idea isn't to propel one holy black anointed person as the chosen one, but for all of us to reach mastery at what we do, work together, share those skills, and support each other.”
― D. Watkins, We Speak for Ourselves: How Woke Culture Prohibits Progress

“Oppressed people do not have the energy to teach everyone about the oppression they have to live through every day.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“I wasn’t hooked on books until I read Sista Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever, Clockers by Richard Price, and a few Sherman Alexie essays. Those books opened up my mind and led to me consuming more and more. My thoughts changed, I developed new ideas, and I was forever transformed. Within months, I went from a guy who solved problems by breaking a bottle over someone’s forehead to using solution-based thinking when resolving—reading instantly civilized me. And if it can work for me, I believe it can work for anybody.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“Miss Sheryl, Dontay, Bucket-Head, and I compiled our loose change for a fifth of vodka. I’m the only driver, so I went to get it. On the way back, I laughed at the local radio stations going on and on and on, still buzzing about Obama taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. Who cares? No really, who? Especially since the funeral was weeks ago. I”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America

“African Americans continue to be the canaries in our coal-mine—the citizens whose unequal opportunities and unequal rights reveal a deeper truth about the fundamental sins of our nation.”
― D. Watkins, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America