In so many of our communities and countries, racism is endemic. It's built in, like a rot in a frame.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the pervasive and ingrained nature of racism within societies.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield emphasizes that racism is not just an occasional issue but is deeply rooted within the structures of communities and nations, akin to a decay that compromises the integrity of a building. This metaphor illustrates the urgent need to address and rectify these foundational problems in order to foster equality and justice.
In practice
In a community meeting addressing racial tensions, this quote can help frame the discussion.
Throughout my career, from Jamaica to Nigeria, Pakistan to Switzerland, I've learned that effective diplomacy means more than shaking hands and staging photo ops. It means developing real, robust relationships. It means finding common ground and managing points of differentiation. It means doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.
The fact that I made it to where I made it, when I look at where I came, I think is a message to the world and it's also a message to other young people who come from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that where they come from does not necessarily have to define where they are going.
Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact that it can have on our everyday lives. We must face it down, every time, no matter whom it's directed towards.
I think countries are now, leaders are now more conscious of the importance of having women engage in their country's development plan. Because again, and I say this over and over and over again, when we invest in women they invest back in their families, they invest in their communities, and they invest in their countries.
The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.
It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia, and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.
To continue living, we have to die. That's the story of humanity - generation after generation - that we are going to die. There's nothing dramatic about death except that one loses one's life.
O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
Hatred obscures all distinctions.
America didnβt bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
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