I feel so guilty about the state of young people today. And I say that because our generation fought for everything. We fought to sit down at a counter, to sit on a bus. They were left with nothing to fight for.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a sense of guilt for the challenges faced by the younger generation, who seem to lack struggles that previous generations fought for.
Cicely Tyson expresses her concerns about the younger generation, feeling guilty that they have not had to engage in significant struggles, such as civil rights battles that her generation faced. She acknowledges the sacrifices made for equality and contemplates the implications of a society where young people may feel they have nothing substantial to fight for, highlighting a possible disconnect between generations and the evolving landscape of social justice.
In practice
In a discussion about generational differences during a community meeting on social issues.
How do you project a character if you don't have a sense of where she is from? I've always just gotten on a plane to go to the area to get a sense of what it is like, to smell it, feel the earth, hear people talk, go to the marketplaces.
I saw that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. So I made a choice to use my career as a platform to address the issues of the race I was born into.
I don't think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don't believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends.
One of the things I have always said about the man-woman relationship is that I don't want anybody to walk ahead of me, and I don't want anybody to walk behind me. I want a man who will walk along beside me. And that's how I feel about equal rights.
Unless a piece really said something, I had no interest in it. I have got to know that I have served some purpose here.
When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused
It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today.
Laws that treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk with respect start with the way that we treat them ourselves: as equals. If we are going to stop the spread of HIV in our lifetime, then that is the change we need to spread.
We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.
Every change is a challenge to become who we really are.
If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.
Only the change on the international scene, the crisis in the gulf, and the strong, firm position of the United States against aggression between two Arab countries created realities that led to the Madrid Peace Conference.
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