Hate crimes impact not just individuals but entire communities. When a family is attacked because of the color of their skin, it's not just the family that feels violated, but every resident of that neighborhood.
James ComeyRead
When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disparity in how crime impacts different communities, emphasizing that violence predominantly affects black individuals rather than white individuals.
James Comey reflects on his experiences as a prosecutor in the 1990s, pointing out the alarming levels of violent crime in Richmond, Virginia. However, he stresses that the narrative often overlooks the racial disparities, as the majority of the victims were black individuals while the white population could largely avoid the consequences of this violence. This statement calls attention to systemic issues and the need for a deeper understanding of how crime and safety perceptions differ across racial lines.
Themes
JusticeRaceCrimeViolenceDisparity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on racial inequality, this quote can help illustrate systemic disparities in crime.
More from James Comey
All quotes →Stuff doesn't matter - boats, cars, fancy things don't matter. What matters, what will matter to me, is the love of the people around me, and did I take a chance? Did I seize an opportunity to do something for people with the talents that I was lucky enough to be given? Did I make a difference in the lives of people who needed me?
James ComeyRead
I think that citizens should be skeptical of government power. But I fear it's bled over to cynicism. It is something that is getting in the way of reasoned discussion, and I'm very concerned about how to change that trend of cynicism.
James ComeyRead
For me, law school was a time of joy and hope. Joy in learning my way around the law - learning how to orbit a problem and to ask myself hard questions and to be asked hard questions. Hope that I could be of some use, to be part of the greater good - to make the world a little bit better.
James ComeyRead
Hate crimes are different from other crimes. They strike at the heart of one's identity - they strike at our sense of self, our sense of belonging. The end result is loss - loss of trust, loss of dignity, and in the worst case, loss of life.
James ComeyRead
Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States - spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize - either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack.
James ComeyRead
Similar quotes
The basis for sustainable progress is legal protections grounded in an awareness of how identity has been used to deny opportunity.
Stacey AbramsRead
The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.
F. Sionil JosRead
I am weary seeing our laboring classes so wretchedly housed, fed, and clothed, while thousands of dollars are wasted every year over unsightly statues. If these great man must have outdoor memorials, let them be in the form of handsome blocks of buildings for the poor
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.
August WilsonRead
In a nation growing increasingly more diverse, it is imperative that the organizations tasked with keeping us informed reflect the same diversity.
Marcia FudgeRead
It is devastating that jail is seen as a rite of passage for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, part of the natural order of things. It is an outrage that there is an attitude that this is normal. This is not normal. We can't shrug our shoulders and say this is just a 'fact of life' in remote Australia.
Bill ShortenRead