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.
The need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.
Flashbacks rarely involve language. Mine certainly didn't. They were visual, motor, and sensory, and they took place in a relentless, horrifying present.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move-and he, in turn, waits for you.
The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
But the most obvious fact about praise β whether of God or anything β strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
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