Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Racism is a learned behavior, not an inherent trait, influenced by societal teachings.
In this quote, Alex Haley emphasizes that racism is not an instinctual reaction but a social construct that individuals learn through their interactions and observations within society. He points out that people's negative attitudes toward those who look different stem from education and environment rather than from natural predisposition, thereby illustrating the importance of challenging these learned behaviors to foster understanding and acceptance.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about inclusion, one might say, 'As Alex Haley stated, racism is a learned behavior, urging us to educate ourselves and others.'
More from Alex Haley
All quotes βTying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
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The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.
I know I'm not a man-about that much I'm very clear, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other-a world that doesn't bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is.
As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home.