“For people of faith and conscience, these issues about implicit racial bias and the realities of white privilege in our society are not just political matters; they are moral and religious questions.”
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
“In one of his most famous quotations, King sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
“Racism is rooted in sin—or evil, as nonreligious people might prefer—which goes deeper than politics, pointing fingers, partisan maneuvers, blaming, or name calling. We can get to a better place only if we go to that morally deeper place. There will be no superficial or merely political overcoming of our racial sins—that will take a spiritual and moral transformation as well. Sin must be named, exposed, and understood before it can be repented of.”
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
“They knew our names and they knew our parents. But they did not know us, because not knowing was essential to their power. To sell a child right from under his mother, you must know that mother only in the thinnest way possible. To strip a man down, condemn him to be beaten, flayed alive, then anointed with salt water, you cannot feel him the way you feel your own. You cannot see yourself in him, lest your hand be stayed, and your hand must never be stayed, because the moment it is, the Tasked will see that you see them, and thus see yourself. In that moment of profound understanding, you are all done, because you cannot rule as is needed.”
― The Water Dancer
― The Water Dancer
“As Nicholas Kristof wrote, “The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them. Too many whites unquestioningly accept a system that disproportionately punishes blacks. . . . We are not racists, but we accept a system that acts in racist ways.”
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
― America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
Celeste’s 2025 Year in Books
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