For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
John F. KennedyRead
Racial bias does exist, and until we can all admit its existence and become introspective as to whether our own personal biases are impacting how we deal with others, there will be no change.
Interpretation
Acknowledging racial bias is essential for personal and societal growth.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing the existence of racial bias, not just in society, but within ourselves as individuals. It calls for introspection and honesty about our own prejudices, suggesting that without this personal acknowledgment and willingness to change, meaningful progress in addressing racial issues cannot occur.
In practice
In a workshop on diversity, this quote can spur discussions about personal biases.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
It's not about changing people; it's sometimes about changing a situation. How can we build an even better situation for them?
And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.
The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles a hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.
I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.
[A] new generation, innocent of the divisions of the Cold War, this coming-of-age. ... If its members do not feel the urgency to escape the nuclear danger that some of its parents felt, neither has it developed the deep attachment to nuclear arms also often found among their parents, including most of the governing class. ... The call for abolition should therefore be, among other things, a call from an older generation to younger one.
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