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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need for equity in improving life, ensuring opportunities are extended to everyone, especially those without access.
Dorothy Height's quote highlights the importance of creating a more equitable society where improvement in life is not reserved solely for the skilled or those who manipulate systems. It calls for including and uplifting those who possess great potential but lack the opportunities to showcase it, reinforcing the idea that true progress involves all members of society.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a speech advocating for social reform to highlight the importance of inclusivity.
I think of my life as a unity of circles. Some are concentric, others overlap, but they all connect in some way. Sometimes the connections don't happen for years. But when they do, I marvel. As in a shimmering kaleidoscope, familiar patterns keep unfolding
Progress comes from caring more about what needs to be done than about who gets the credit
We had people of all backgrounds coming together - all races, all creeds, all colors, all status in life. And coming together there was a kind of quiet dignity and a kind of sense of caring and a feeling of joint responsibility.
There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights.
The Black family of the future will foster our liberation, enhance our self-esteem, and shape our ideas and goals.
My mother helped me understand how not to show off what I knew, but how to use it so that others might benefit.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.
Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
Growth is essential and must be sustained. But rapid growth alone cannot address the problems arising out of continuing disparities. Tackling these is not just a matter of social justice but, more importantly, an existential necessity and a moral imperative.
Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?
I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.
The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison.
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