David Anderson

“James Baldwin’s words haunt: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Are we a nation of monsters?”
― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

“Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.”
― Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right

“At an 1870 Anti-Slavery Society convention, Frederick Douglass proclaimed, 'I bow to no priests either of faith or of unfaith. I claim as against all sorts of people, simply perfect freedom of thought.' Douglass' comments were in response to black preachers' insistence he 'thank' God for Emancipation. His failure to be appropriately devout elicted a firestorm. After his speech, a group of prominent black preachers passed a Resolution censuring him....This rebuke was perhaps one of the first documented instances of the black 'authenticity police' trying to silence an eminent thinker.”
― Sikivu Hutchinson in Moral Combat Black Atheists Gender Politics and the Values Wars

“It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being ... must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time