Abhimat

“I am constantly reminding myself that the goal of protest is progress, not simply more protest. Protest, though not the solution, is a precursor to the solution. It creates space that would otherwise not exist, and forces conversations and topics that have been long ignored into the public sphere. It illuminates what our country would rather forget. Protest remains necessary in a country with such ingrained systemic inequity and in which the traditional mechanisms of power have not often benefited marginalized communities without direct pressure.”
― DeRay Mckesson, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope

“I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium were plundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people they slaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In the gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal? So in Europe and America, yes, Hitler is the Greatest”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, “I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“It turns out that there is no “right” or “wrong” way to grow into a hundred-year-old tree: there are only ways that work and ways that do not.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl