Alexis > Alexis's Quotes

“Christian complicity with racism in the twenty-first century looks different than complicity with racism in the past. It looks like Christians responding to 'black lives matter' with the phrase 'all lives matter.' It looks like Christians consistently supporting a president whose racism has been on display for decades. It looks like Christians telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are 'divisive.' It looks conversations on race that focus on individual relationships and are unwilling to discuss systemic solutions. Perhaps Christian complicity in racism has not changed after all. Although the characters and the specifics are new, many of the same rationalizations for racism remain.”
― Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

“The KKK interspersed Christianity with racism to create a nationalistic form of religion that excluded all but American-born, Protestant white men and women.”
― Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

“The Klan capitalized on white fears of just about anyone they defined as nonwhite, non-American, and non-Protestant. For example, Klan members successfully lobbied for the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, which limited immigration from select countries.”
― Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land--every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike--all snored in the same language.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain's superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors – in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of hell that they have caught, here in white man’s heaven! The miracle is that the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders’, his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Truth does not change, only our awareness of it.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The root of the black man's hatred is rage,
and he does not so much had the white man
as simply as want the out of his way,
and, more than that,
out of his children's way.

The root of the white man's hatred is terror,
a bottomless and nameless terror,
which focuses on this dread figure,
an entity which lives only in his mind.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“There are worse stories than this and better ones. The reaction always varies because you can only put up with what you can put up with when you can put up with it.”
― Amber Ruffin, You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

“For this scribe has read a great many of these accounts and taken away another lesson: that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“I’m not sure I ever stopped being a nakhudha,” I finally replied. “Our hearts may be spoken for by those with sweet eyes, little smiles, and so very many needs, but that does not mean that which makes us us is gone. And I hope . . . part of me hopes anyway that in seeing me do this, Marjana knows more is possible. I would not want her to believe that because she was born a girl, she cannot dream.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“For while the pious claim money doesn’t buy happiness, I can attest from personal experience that poverty buys nothing.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

“For the greatest crime of the poor in the eyes of the wealthy has always been to strike back. To fail to suffer in silence and instead disrupt their lives and their fantasies of a compassionate society that coincidentally set them on top. To say no.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“Ah yes, a certain degree of rebelliousness is expected from youth. It is why we have stories of treasure-seeking princesses and warrior women that end with the occasional happiness. But they are expected to end—with the boy, the prince, the sailor, the adventurer. The man that will take her maidenhood, grant her children, make her a wife. The man who defines her. He may continue his epic—he may indeed take new wives and make new children!—but women’s stories are expected to dissolve into a fog of domesticity . . . if they’re told at all.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“I have traveled widely enough that I take everything written about “foreigners” with doubt and know better than to judge a community by their worst individuals.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

“Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“A woman can lower her gaze only so often without tripping over her feet.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

“People have this idea of mothers, that we are soft and gentle and sweet. As though the moment my daughter was laid on my breast, the phrase I would do anything did not take on a depth I could have never understood before.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

“And by “less than pleased,” she called me a fucking idiot and went into a great harangue about the management of risk that convinced me she regularly murdered curious neighbors.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“he said he hoped you had deep pockets.” “How fortunate that I do.” And whether that meant it held coins, my fist, or a knife, I’d yet to decide.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“Now, listen . . . I’m not an easy woman to shock. I’m a sinner very much relying on the “Most Merciful” aspect of my Lord.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“I have traveled widely enough that I take everything written about “foreigners” with doubt and know better than to judge a community by their worst individuals.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“I have not survived this long by confusing courage with foolishness. People may call my kind sea rats, but let me tell you ,rats know when to fucking run.”
― Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

“In town, he wore his religion like armor, and somehow that kept him untouchable. At home, he wielded it like a weapon.”
― Krysten Ritter, Bonfire