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.
People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.
I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views.
I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death.
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.
A cannon fires only once but words detonate across centuries
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