James Baldwin, “A Letter to My Nephew” (1962)
There is no reason for you to try to become like white men and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.
Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.
You don’t be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man’s definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention and by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers, your lost younger brothers, and if the word “integration” means anything, this is what it means, that we with love shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.
Sarah Gailey, “A List of Questions”
Do I have everything I need? Do I need everything I have?
Have I eaten? Have we eaten? Have they eaten?
Who needs to sleep? Who needs to cry? Who needs to rest and heal?
Am I ready? Are we ready? Are they ready?
Rebecca Solnit, in the Foreword to The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World by David Graeber
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” If you truly believe that, if you perceive a world that is constructed according to certain assumptions and values, then you see that it can be changed, not least by changing those assumptions and values. …
Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.
Duncan Black, “Campaign Money”
An incorrect assumption embedded in a lot of discussion of campaign finance issues is that, for example, if you support an increase in the minimum wage, then business interests will run ads about your position on that policy.
But that isn’t actually what happens. Mininum wage increases, for example, are fairly popular, so that money is used to fund ads that suggest you are a pedophile.
Ken White, “Refuge In Kakistocracy”
Trump’s laziness, poor attention span, tendency to be distracted by petty grievances and threats to his ego, and total lack of loyalty to anyone will be impediments to his agenda. The people he picks tend to be a grab bag of personality disorders who squabble and fight for power, he tends to screw them over when they annoy him, and they’re all quite annoying.
I’m not saying that things won’t be bad. … I expect things to be very bad for a long time, possibly a generation, as a result of America’s choice. What I am saying is that perhaps they will not be as bad as they could be because God, in His wisdom, has chosen to make these people weird freaks along the way to letting them run the place. This is a time to cherish every hope and embrace every ally. Trump and Trumpists are dysfunctional weirdos and that fact is our ally. Cold comfort is still comfort.
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