I'm told I'm a statistic. I'm told that my young black sisters are disease-ridden... but we are greater than what society tells us we are.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes resilience and the rejection of negative societal stereotypes.
Jurnee Smollett-Bell's quote challenges the dehumanizing statistics and stereotypes often associated with young black women, asserting their strength and worth beyond societal labels. It speaks to the importance of self-identity and the power of overcoming prejudiced views through self-empowerment and collective strength.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech encouraging young women to embrace their identity.
Oftentimes, a history book in school will talk about the Underground Railroad as if it's one sentence. But thousands of people decided to run, and they single-handedly changed the trajectory of our nation. By running to the North, they put a face to slavery, which recruited a lot of abolitionists.
Once every seven days, do something that frightens you. Every time we do something that we resist and is frightening, we actually grow in our power.
Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.
As a black woman in the industry, you really do have to hold your head higher, stick your chest out, be kind and polite and generous even when you don't want to be sometimes. I learned that and, also, just to never take no for an answer.
Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden with veils and masks; whether yoked with cows to draw the plow through its furrows, or classed with idiots, lunatics and criminals in the laws and constitutions of the State, the principle is the same; for the humiliations of the spirit are as real as the visible badges of servitude.
For love of country, they accepted death.
Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
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