The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the persistent belief in the devaluation of certain groups of people, particularly in the context of societal prejudice.
Jesmyn Ward's quote expresses a profound critique of systemic racism and inequality that continues to pervade society. By referring to the 'ugly heart of the South,' she alludes to the historical and ongoing struggles against racial discrimination, suggesting that there is a deeply ingrained belief that some individuals are inherently less valuable than others based on their identity. This statement serves as a call to awareness and action against these harmful ideologies.
In practice
During a discussion on racial equity, you might quote this to emphasize the ongoing struggle against systemic racism.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
I think people make certain assumptions about what they're interested in reading or what others would be interested in reading, and when they think of poor black people in the South, they don't think people are interested in reading about those people.
Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.
If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
I most certainly believe that it is the gift of God that I am what I am. And so I dwell amongst barbarians, a proselyte and an exile, for the love of God.
A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.
At bottom, the battle has been waged on moral grounds. The country has debated whether a society for which the dignity of the individual is the supreme value can, without a fundamental inconsistency, follow the practice of deliberately putting one of its members to death.
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