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.
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people.
In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.
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