I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.
Interpretation
Patriarchy is a deeply ingrained issue that requires constant effort to overcome.
In this quote, Cornel West asserts that patriarchy is akin to a pervasive disease that affects one's worldview and needs continual vigilance and effort to confront and overcome. He draws parallels to addiction, emphasizing that just as individuals in recovery must grapple with their challenges daily, so too must society actively resist and dismantle patriarchal norms ingrained in culture.
In practice
In a discussion about gender equality, this quote can emphasize the importance of recognizing and challenging ingrained societal norms.
King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.
You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.
Profound music leads us beyond language...to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'
Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.
Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.
Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.
All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
I don't believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.
The past of the soul is so distant! The soul does not live on the edge of time. It finds its rest in the universe imagined by reverie.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.