It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rebirth signifies a deeper understanding of social realities beyond fundamental truths about life and death.
In this quote, Nadine Gordimer explores the concept of rebirth as an awakening to the often painful truths of societal divisions, particularly racial ones. It suggests that the recognition of these divisions is a critical moment of realization for a child, highlighting the difference between the inevitability of death and the painful recognition of social injustice and exclusion that limits access and opportunity based on race.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about racial equality, one might say, 'As Nadine Gordimer noted, rebirth is essential to understanding the harsh realities of our society.'
More from Nadine Gordimer
All quotes →The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand.
Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.
Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.
A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.
If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
Similar quotes
For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.
I do not hesitate to proclaim before you and before the world that all human life-from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages-is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God.
Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
Only the dead stay seventeen forever.
The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.