African-Americans have always viewed the protection of black lives as a civil rights issue, whether the threat comes from police officers or street criminals. Far from ignoring the issue of crime by blacks against other blacks, African-American officials and their constituents have been consumed by it.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of protecting black lives within the context of civil rights, addressing both systemic violence and intra-community crime.
James Forman, Jr. highlights the longstanding commitment of African-Americans to protect their communities, framing the issue of black lives as integral to the broader civil rights narrative. He argues that this concern encompasses threats from law enforcement as well as the violence that can occur within communities, signifying a complex understanding of safety and justice that African-American leaders and citizens grapple with daily.
In practice
During a panel discussion on civil rights, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of addressing both police violence and community crime.
In court, judges tell people that their conviction carries a sentence of years, or probation. The truth is far more terrible. People convicted of crimes often become social outcasts for life, finding it difficult or impossible to rent an apartment, get a job, adopt children, access public benefits, serve on juries, or vote.
While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally.
A black man of my generation born in the late 1960s is more than twice as likely to go to prison in his lifetime then a black man of my father's generation. I was born after the Voting Rights Act, after the Civil Rights Act, after the Fair Housing Act.
Mass incarceration and its never-ending human toll will be with us until we come to see that no crime justifies permanent civic death.
The only news most people ever hear about the inner city comes from grim headlines; the only residents they can name are characters on 'The Wire.' Of course, ignorance of a community doesn't stop outsiders from having opinions about it or passing laws that govern it.
We need to hire more black police officers in this country because these are good jobs, and African Americans should have their fair share of good jobs. But we shouldn't do it because we think that's going to change policing. We have to push for police reform in other ways.
It is an insult for me to have been alive through the times you are calling the so-called civil rights movement. I don't celebrate my humiliations and my insults.
Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.
The seminal right of the modern civil rights movement was the right to vote. My father fought so diligently for it. Certainly Congressman John Lewis and many others, Hosea Williams, fought for it as well.
There has been far too much hypocrisy in the field of civil rights. It is easy enough to give rousing speeches or call for legislation which has no possibility of passage.
When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.
One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.
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