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.
There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.
You have someone like Colin or many of the other athletes who have knelt, especially athletes of colour, and if you're not respecting what they're saying, if you're not believing their charges of police brutality or racial inequality, you're saying that they're lying.
What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.
The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.
When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our 'colorblind' society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure - the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.
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