I was taught you don't tell your secrets to strangers - certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure. My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of discretion in sharing personal vulnerabilities, especially in a societal context that may not be sympathetic.
Margo Jefferson's quote reflects on the lessons learned by her generation regarding the sharing of personal secrets and vulnerabilities. It suggests that, in a society where achievements of marginalized communities often go unrecognized, individuals are taught to keep their failures and uncertainties private. The fear of being judged or misunderstood by those outside their community fosters a culture of silence about personal struggles, emphasizing the need for caution in revealing one’s weaknesses to strangers who may not understand or empathize.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of sharing personal struggles in a supportive environment.
We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
The proof that one truly believes is in action.
For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
It is useful to constantly observe, note, and consider.
First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies. Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and the end of end? And finally give me the sound often heard During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
It's not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.
I'm a big cockeyed optimist. I try to accentuate the positive as opposed to the negative.
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