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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of social justice in one's work and the desire to positively influence perceptions of marginalized communities, particularly people of color.
Winston Duke expresses a commitment to ensuring that his work contributes to social justice efforts. He recognizes the need for all his endeavors to have a meaningful impact on society, with a specific focus on improving how people perceive and understand the experiences of people of color. This reflects a broader responsibility to use one's platform and influence to advocate for equality and representation.
In practice
In a speech at a community event advocating for racial equality.
I grew up under the politics of my size and my skin. I grew up under the politics of the sound of my voice and a lack of agency, or a feeling of a lack of agency, and not always being able to find myself in images that were in the media.
We're criminalizing economic inability to stay out of the system. Women get penalized more than men for the same crime; blacks get penalized more than whites for the same crime. We need to bring out more into the light, because it's not fair... I applaud Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.
Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.
When money, instead of man, is at the center of the system, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced to simple instruments of a social and economic system, which is characterized, better yet dominated, by profound inequalities. So we discard whatever is not useful to this logic; it is this attitude that discards children and older people, and is now affecting the young.
The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were Black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate.
Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure.
I want to help correct the inaccurate image of immigration in the media. There is an idea that women's issues are over here and immigration is over there. Three quarters of undocumented workers are women and children.
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