Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the challenge to existing social privileges and norms posed by the Black Power movement.
Margo Jefferson reflects on how the Black Power movement was a significant challenge to the social privileges that were ingrained in her upbringing. She highlights how the idea that one must conform to an ideal of whiteness to succeed began to shatter, revealing the need for broader social change and recognition of Black identity and power.
In practice
During a speech on racial equality, one might quote Jefferson to highlight the necessity of confronting social norms.
We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation.
Even if we didn't have greenhouse gases, were going to have to move away from fossil fuels, as we're going to run out. They're finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite.
My world has changed, and so have I. I have learned to choose and I have learned to say goodbye.
Irrespective of todays judgment and the price we had to pay in this generation, we were able to close an epoch of divisions, different blocs and borders, opening the way for an era of globalization.
During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebration. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that.
I recalled how much time i had spent fighting for something i didn't even want. maybe because i had been too lazy to think of other avenues to follow. maybe because i had been afraid of what others would think. maybe because it was hard work to be different. perhaps, because a human being is condemned to repeat the steps taken by the previous generation until a certain number of people begin to behave in a different fashion. then the world changes, and we change with it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.