When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear
Assata ShakurRead
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Awareness of oppression is crucial for freedom.
This quote by Assata Shakur highlights the dangers of becoming desensitized to oppression. It suggests that as individuals or communities endure oppressive conditions without critical awareness, they may come to accept these conditions as the norm. To attain true freedom, one must actively recognize and confront the realities of their oppression, understanding that complacency breeds tolerance for injustice.
Themes
OppressionFreedomAwarenessToleranceNormalization
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of acknowledging systemic issues.
More from Assata Shakur
All quotes →Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It's really working to create something beautiful.
Assata ShakurRead
We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active
Assata ShakurRead
I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we're the terrorists. It just doesn't make sense.
Assata ShakurRead
My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
Assata ShakurRead
Peace is a rare gift. Peace of mind, peaceful sleeps, and peaceful spirits are all luxuries that few rebels can ever afford.
Assata ShakurRead
Similar quotes
Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.
Cormac MccarthyRead
Words, in their distant past, have the past of my reveries.
Gaston BachelardRead
To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually changing and moving in a circular course. Spring is followed by summer, summer by autumn, and autumn by winter, which is again followed by spring, and so time continues its everlasting round. But the life of man is ever racing to its end, swifter than time itself, without hope of renewal, unless in the next that is limitless and infinite.
Miguel De CervantesRead
For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions, and the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them.
Albert EinsteinRead
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
Bernard WilliamsRead
You will not dishonor the divine perfections by judgments unworthy of them, provided you never judge of Him by yourself, provided you do not ascribe to the Creator the imperfections and limitations of created beings.
Nicolas MalebrancheRead