Many unhoused people work full time but earn starvation, unlivable wages. Some struggle to access mental health services or substance use treatment, making earning a consistent and stable wage nearly impossible.
This stereotype that Black and brown boys and girls are dangerous or threatening has normalized systems of trauma: the cradle to prison pipeline, foster care, youth detention, and being tried and sentenced as adults. We treat trauma with more trauma.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the harmful stereotypes about Black and brown children that lead to systemic issues and trauma.
Cori Bush's quote addresses the damaging stereotypes that label Black and brown boys and girls as dangerous, which contribute to a cycle of trauma within society. These stereotypes create a 'cradle to prison pipeline' where marginalized youth face systemic discrimination, leading them to experience foster care, youth detention, and being treated as adults within the judicial system. Instead of addressing the underlying trauma, society often responds with additional trauma, perpetuating a harmful cycle that affects not only individuals but entire communities.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing systemic racism and its impact on youth, this quote can illustrate the struggles faced by marginalized communities.
More from Cori Bush
All quotes →The death penalty is an inhumane punishment that disproportionately violates the human rights of Black, brown, indigenous, and other marginalized people.
By expanding the legal authority of law enforcement agencies - without addressing the infiltration of white supremacy within law enforcement - we are expanding the capacity of white supremacy itself.
We don't live in a world that nurtures and cares for Black girls like me. And if the world doesn't care about a Black girl like me, then what will happen to our Black babies who grow up to become Black children and Black adults?
Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure.
We treat Black and brown kids who can't vote yet, can't join the military, can't rent a car or even buy a lottery ticket - like adults in our criminal legal system. We deprive them of their joy and their youth. Children who deserve to live rich and abundant lives.
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Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity - whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics, or white wealth - to justify the brutal assaults against black people of all genders.
I want all of the work that I do to have a social justice footprint attached. I want it to move the needle forward when it comes to the perception of all people, but especially people of color.
Those in the community who defy authority and 'break the law' seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.
Poverty, the racial divide and social injustice do not impact only those who suffer most visibly. Alleviating poverty and injustice is a responsibility we must never forget or abandon.
'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
I'm sick and tired of black and white people of good intent giving aspirin to a society that is dying of a cancerous disease.