You can't segregate and humiliate people decade after decade without creating long-lasting injuries.
Interpretation
Systematic discrimination causes deep and lasting harm to individuals and communities.
In this quote, Bryan Stevenson emphasizes the profound impact of persistent segregation and humiliation on individuals and society as a whole. He suggests that this cycle of oppression leads to profound psychological and social injuries that can last for generations, arguing for the necessity of acknowledging and addressing these injustices to heal and move forward.
In practice
Referencing this quote in a speech about social justice initiatives.
That's my mission: I really want to get in the heads and hearts of kids and persuade them that they can believe things they haven't seen, they can do things that maybe others haven't done before them, that they are more than their worst acts.
We all have a responsibility to create a just society
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.
If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.
One day I visited a guy who had made a fortune as a broker. He was sitting in his office with his computer. I hire people from here and make deals from this room, he told me. Then he took me to the trading room. Nobody was talking to anybody else, the place was silent as a tomb, they were all sitting there watching their terminals - a great word, terminal. I tell you, it scares the crap out of me.
Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.
I just sit here and tell the story as though I can't help it. There's always something in the day that reminds me, that sets me off all hot and guilty and scared and rambling and wistful, like I am now.
How could I bear a crown of gold when the Lord bears a crown of thorns? And bears it for me!
Some of the worst racist tragedies in history have been perfectly legal.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
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