Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the misguided belief that segregation's end has hindered communication between races.
Benjamin E. Mays highlights a paradox where despite the well-intentioned efforts to abolish segregation in schools, there is a perception that communication between racial groups has suffered. This suggests that legal changes alone do not necessarily bridge social divides, emphasizing the complexity of human relationships and the deeper societal issues that influence communication.
In practice
In a speech addressing community issues, one might use this quote to illustrate the complexities of racial relations post-segregation.
The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream...It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.
In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.
It isn't more light we need, it isn't more truth, and it isn't more scientific data. It is more Christ, more courage, more spiritual insight to act on the light we have.
A child must learn early to believe that she is somebody worthwhile, and that she can do many praiseworthy things.
Whatever you do,strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.
He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.
The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
Some stories, she’d say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be.
I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.
Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London.
Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.
It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her.
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