Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."
Interpretation
The quote explores the concept of racial identity and how it is socially constructed in different contexts.
Cornel West highlights the experience of immigrants in the United States who, upon arrival, were made aware of their racial identity as 'white' despite having previously identified primarily with their ethnic backgrounds. This revelation underscores how racial categorizations are not inherently understood but are imposed by societal structures, transforming personal identity in the context of a new environment.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture about immigration and identity.
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.'
I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.
It destroys the soul to hear that you're all hype, that you have no talent, and that your whole career has been contrived.
Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.
What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.
The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.
Evolution does not isolate us from the rest of the Kosmos, it unites us with the rest of the Kosmos: the same currents that produced birds from dust and poetry from rocks produce egos from ids and sages from egos.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.