Like every New Yorker, I know this place is magic. I know this place is amazing. I know that we have come back time and time again from a great recession, from high crime rates, from 9/11, from crisis after crisis.
Maya WileyRead
My mother was this White woman from Texas, from a racist town raised to believe in the inferiority of others by her community, not necessarily by her parents, but certainly by the community around her. And she fled it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a mother's courage to escape a prejudiced environment to seek a better, more accepting life.
In this quote, Maya Wiley describes the background of her mother, who grew up in a racially prejudiced town in Texas. Despite being raised in a community that instilled beliefs in the inferiority of others, her mother demonstrated remarkable courage by choosing to flee that environment, suggesting a strong desire for change and a rejection of societal norms that promote racism.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming adversity, you might reference this quote to illustrate the power of personal choice against societal pressures.
Like every New Yorker, I know this place is magic. I know this place is amazing. I know that we have come back time and time again from a great recession, from high crime rates, from 9/11, from crisis after crisis.
And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that's what we do every single day and in every single way.
When Superstorm Sandy churned up fourteen-foot walls of water that slammed New York's coastal communities in October 2012, they also washed away any false notions we had that we care sufficiently for poor people.
I am a Black woman raised by parents who were active in the civil-rights movement.
In fact, black students with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as white students with college degrees. So, to say there there is not an issue for black Americans and Latinos in terms of the opportunity that college is supposed to create would be wrong.
We used to watch my father, who was a civil-rights activist, get arrested on TV sometimes, and we never knew if he was going to be home for dinner.
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
Violence toward women isn't cultural; it's criminal.
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.
Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become.
When you’re sitting in a dark room, you can either sit and curse the darkness—or you can light a candle.
I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother... Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life.
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