I have long since passed that period when I felt personal discomfort at the sight of an ill-dressed or illiterate Negro. Social awareness has taught me where to lay the blame.
Lorraine HansberryRead
Daddy felt that this country was hopeless in its treatment of Negroes. So he became a refugee from America. He bought a house in Polanco, a suburb of Mexico City, and we were planning to move there when he died. I was fourteen at the time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a father's despair over racial injustice and the drastic decision to seek a better life elsewhere for his family.
In this quote, Lorraine Hansberry shares the profound impact of her father's views on race and justice in America, illustrating how deeply the treatment of African Americans affected his sense of hope. The decision to leave the country, expressed through the metaphor of becoming a 'refugee', underscores a powerful commentary on the emotional and physical toll of systemic racism, as well as the longing for a safe and just environment for his family to thrive.
Themes
RaceInjusticeRefugeeFamilyHope
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about systemic racism and its effects on families.
More from Lorraine Hansberry
All quotes βI feel that women - without wishing to foster any strict separatist notions, homo or hetero - indeed have a need for their own publications and organizations. Our problems, our experiences as women are profoundly unique as compared to the other half of the human race.
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It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.
Lorraine HansberryRead
I am a writer. I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality.
Lorraine HansberryRead
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and - I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.
Lorraine HansberryRead
Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all... When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
Lorraine HansberryRead
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