We have a responsibility to do better as black people in this country. I don't care how white people look at you - I care that we have a one-trillion-dollar spending base, and if you want to see change, you have to start to focus on, economically, how can we change our communities.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of economic empowerment within the Black community as a means to create societal change.
Killer Mike highlights the responsibility that the Black community has to improve their circumstances by focusing on economic strength and unity. He suggests that rather than being influenced by external perceptions, the community should leverage its significant economic power to enact meaningful change in society. This shift in focus from external validation to internal economic development is crucial for progress.
In practice
In a community development meeting focused on economic strategies.
I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.
The way you start to break down systemic racism is to start building individual relationships with people who are not like you.
Government should fear the people, not the other way around.
I have hurt my community. I have to look myself in the mirror and know that, and I have to own that in order to grow past that.
I just need the junkies and the liars and the thieves,_x000D_ _x000D_ I need the pimps, prostitutes and pushers out in the streets._x000D_ _x000D_ That's where I'm seeking God, cause that's where He found me.
For the people of Baltimore, I don't criticize rioting, because I understand it. But after the fires die down, organize, strategize, and mobilize.
As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use the energy that had developed around my case to create another organization, which we called the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.
If no one ever broke the rules, then we'd never advance.
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.
Just because they broke the law doesn't mean they're condemned forever to a twilight status. So, I think that most Americans, if these people who have come illegally, as long as they pay back taxes, pay a fine, learn English and get behind everybody else, that's a key element of it. And most Americans now realize we can't have 11 million people sit in the twilight - the shadows of America, forever.
I'm going to do anything I can do - whether that's being part of FIFA or creating some sort of movement that can actually impart real equality across all lines - in every country, every city, every sector all over the world, that's what I'm going to do.
The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.
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