Laura Kisthardt

“I'm an optimist because I know what technology can accomplish and I know what people can accomplish.”
― Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

“When I realized he was about to open up the floor for discussion, I folded myself into the chair, trying to make my body smaller, trying to disappear. Will you make me explain this? Will you ask me to tell this all-white class about the masks Black people wear? I was surprised by own reaction. It felt deeply gratifying to have my own experience named, lifted up, discussed, considered worthy of everyone’s attention. And yet, I had no desire to be the Black spokesperson. It felt too risky. I wasn’t sure that my classmates had earned the right to know, to understand, to be given access to such a vulnerable place in my experience. For me, this was more than an educational exercise. This is how we survive.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

“We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery’s role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable “states’ rights.” We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable—and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today.”
― Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness