Allee

“Into this maelstrom, this present elaboration of the slave quarters, this rehearsal for a concentration camp, we place, armed, not for the protection of the ghetto but for the protection of American investments there, some blank American boy who is responsible only to some equally blank elder patriot… The white cop in the ghetto is as ignorant as he is frightened, and his entire concept of police work is to cow the natives. He is not compelled to answer these natives for anything he does; whatever he does, he knows that he will be protected by his brothers, who will allow nothing to stain the honor of the force. And he is assured of the rightness of his court and the justice of his bigotry every time Nixon, or Agnew, or Mitchell - or the governor of the state of California - open their mouths.”
― James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policeman, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law’s protection the most! - and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it.”
― James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

“She had done her best to show him he was loved, even in the moments he perplexed and scared her. He was lucky, luckier than she’d been. She had wanted him to have a different life than hers, but she had not expected that in doing so she had given him a life that would take him away from her.”
― Santiago Jose Sanchez, Hombrecito

“How cruel that our parents, unexorcisable, go on inside of us. How cruel that we cannot disimbricate their ghosts from our being.”
― Rivers Solomon, Model Home