If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the 13th Amendment focuses solely on the legal aspects of slavery rather than societal narratives or ideologies surrounding race.
Bryan Stevenson highlights that the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, does not address the underlying racial ideologies or social narratives that contribute to systemic racism. Instead, it strictly defines the issue of involuntary servitude and forced labor, suggesting that legal frameworks alone do not address the broader societal context of racial differences and injustices.
In practice
This quote could be used during discussions on racial justice and legal reforms.
That's my mission: I really want to get in the heads and hearts of kids and persuade them that they can believe things they haven't seen, they can do things that maybe others haven't done before them, that they are more than their worst acts.
We all have a responsibility to create a just society
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.
If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.
I used to tell women graduate students, half-seriously, that the role of slightly rebellious daughter was one of the better roles for women living in patriarchy.
"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas.
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
There's this romantic idea that's built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.
There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
America rests on shared values rather than shared ethnicity.
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