Why do we cling to bigotry? Because bigotry, plainly, is convenient. It is a near-effortless way to both elevate one's stature and make a pity grab in this culture of victims that we have become.
John RidleyRead
Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that slavery is an extreme and systemic oppression far beyond typical workplace grievances.
John Ridley's quote starkly contrasts the experience of slavery with common frustrations at work, highlighting that slavery represents a totalization of human suffering and subjugation, rather than just a challenging job or boss. It serves as a reminder that the brutality of slavery must be recognized as a profound moral and historical blight, rather than trivialized by comparison to everyday employment issues.
Themes
SlaveryOppressionSubjugationFreedomInjustice
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about human rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the severity of oppression.
More from John Ridley
All quotes →Being of color in America by no means amounts to a constant barrage of negativity. However, unlike being white, being of color means one's race is a constant issue.
John RidleyRead
People of color grow up steeped in 'white' culture. The reverse is not true. And, no, listening to hip-hop on the way to work does not count as immersion.
John RidleyRead
For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.
John RidleyRead
Similar quotes
Thus this Earth resembles a great animall or rather an inanimate vegetable, draws in aethereal breath for its dayly refreshment and vitall ferment and transpires again grosses exhalations. And, according to the condition of all other things living, ought to have its time of beginning, youth, old age and perishing.
Isaac NewtonRead
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
Publilius SyrusRead
The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
Ariel DurantRead
Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.
Eckhart TolleRead
O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,_x000D_ That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;_x000D_ Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,_x000D_ Their names without a record are forgot,_x000D_ Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th' dust_x000D_ Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust;_x000D_ But he whose name is graved in the white stone_x000D_ Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
Anne BradstreetRead