If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.
Sarah ChurchwellRead
The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote discusses how systemic issues link racial groups to poverty and use the concept of race as a means of distraction from these injustices.
Sarah Churchwell's quote highlights the deep-rooted issues stemming from slavery, emphasizing that the legacy of this historical injustice is perpetuated through political, legal, and economic structures designed to keep certain groups, particularly racial minorities, in a state of poverty. The mention of race serves as a distraction from the true nature of systematic disenfranchisement and exploitation that these groups face, illustrating how societal constructs can obscure the realities of inequality and injustice.
Themes
LegacySlaveryPovertyRaceDisenfranchisement
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social justice in a classroom setting.
More from Sarah Churchwell
All quotes →Similar quotes
I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Elizabeth WarrenRead
We have to improve life, not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system. But also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.
Dorothy HeightRead
When you ask people to name victims of police brutality, for the most part, nobody will give you a woman's name.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
I don't want our white working class sisters and brothers to feel as though their pain is not important because it is. But at the same time, I want my white sisters and brothers to understand that when we talk about income and wealth inequality, that disproportionately African Americans suffer a little more.
Nina TurnerRead
Who is affected more when it's cold? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's hot? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's wet? Poor people. Who is most affected when the economy is bad? Poor people. Poor people are the most fragile.
Russel HonoreRead
'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
Joyce Carol OatesRead