cerise’s Reviews > Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches > Status Update

“I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of destructive guilt, and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably a better hearing.”

“That visibility which makes us most vulnerable, is that which is also the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.”

“Black women…to survive in this dragon’s mouth we call America, we must first learn this most vital lesson: that we were never meant to survive, not as humans beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not.”