Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the historical injustices of racism and discrimination, emphasizing the dehumanization that arises from such beliefs.
Desmond Tutu's quote reflects on the profound moral and ethical implications of racism, xenophobia, and unfair discrimination. By likening the plight of enslaved individuals to that of 'beasts of burden,' Tutu underscores the brutal reality that such ideologies can lead to the complete devaluation of human life, resulting in practices like slavery where individuals are treated as mere commodities rather than as people with dignity and rights. This serves as a powerful reminder of the necessity to resist and combat these harmful beliefs in order to uphold the sanctity and value of every human being.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on the history of civil rights movements to highlight the importance of understanding the roots of discrimination.
The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions
As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
Gaza is going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
We have built a thousand temples to Fortune and not one to Reason
A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
I finally knew... why Christ's prayer in the garden could not be granted. He had been seeded and birthed into human flesh. He was one of us. Once He had become mortal, He could not become immortal except by dying. That He prayed the prayer at all showed how human He was. That He knew it could not be granted showed his divinity; that He prayed it anyhow showed His mortality, His mortal love of life that His death made immortal.
I think what's really happening is that a dialogue opens up between the ego and these larger, more integrated parts of the psyche that are normally hidden from view.
Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest. (Let no man belong to another that can belong to himself.)
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