Allegra Dimperio

“Lincoln made the short trip to Baltimore and gave one of the most insightful abolitionist speeches of his career on April 18, 1864. He answered the enduring American paradox: How could the land of freedom also be the land of slavery? “With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor,” he said, “while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” Lincoln used an analogy for clarification. “The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one,” he said. “Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“The real object of our scorn might not be in our food safety standards, in the revolving-door regulators, in the rise of industry, or even in the abuse and commodification of men, but in ourselves as agents in this world: for knowing what we want and what we are willing to give up to get it, for understanding that this is a moral outrage we’ve been digging for all along because it verifies what we know but also don’t quite want to acknowledge about ourselves.”
― Benjamin Lorr, The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

“The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don’t know what is happening.”
― Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God

“Welfare “transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it,” Goldwater wrote without a shred of evidence. Many proud, dignified, industrious, self-reliant members of the White middle class, who had derived their wealth from the welfare of inheritance, the New Deal, or the GI Bill, accepted Goldwater’s dictum as truth, despite the fact that parental or government assistance had not transformed them or their parents into dependent animal creatures. After looking at White mothers on welfare as “deserving” for decades, these Goldwater conservatives saw the growing number of Black mothers on welfare as “undeserving”—as dependent animal creatures.16”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America