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posts tagged "quote"

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In his introduction to Sach’s The End of Poverty, Bono said, “It’s up to us.” Sachs writes of “our generation’s challenge.” Gordon Brown, in announcing his Big Push aid plan, saw himself telling Africans: “We have to say,” “We will help you build the capacity you need to trad. Not just opening the door but helping you gain the strength to cross the threshold.”

The most infuriating thing about the Planners is how patronizing they are (usually unconsciously). Here’s a secret: anytime you hear a Western politician or activist say “we”, they mean “we whites” - today’s version of the White Man’s Burden. […]

Cameroonian lawyer and journalist Jean-Claude Shanda Tonne protested in July 2005 New York Times Op-Ed column about the Live 8 concert organizers that “they still believe us to be like children that they must save,” with “their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.”

William Easterly in The White Man’s Burden P23
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Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (via monkeyknifefight)

This also goes for double consciousness. It is basically the same principle for internalised racism given that this is how any form of internalised oppression plays out. Well this is at least how I live it as a black person, an African and a woman. 

The white gaze to me: “You are a black person with a white person inside watching a black person. You are your own voyeur.”

This quote is brilliant!

(via daniellemertina)

Humans are way too fascinated by shininess and bling. Fuck that! Let’s go into the darkness and drown into our nothingness. That would be edgy. 

Humans are way too fascinated by shininess and bling. Fuck that! Let’s go into the darkness and drown into our nothingness. That would be edgy. 

halftheskymovement: Maya Angelou - American author and poet

halftheskymovement:

Maya Angelou - American author and poet

oh-sayitaintso: The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (by Lauren Watkins)

oh-sayitaintso:

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (by Lauren Watkins)

(via mysoliloqies)

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Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.

dream hampton (via dreamhampton1)

(via palmofmyhands)

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So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

J.K. Rowling (via thefreenomad)

I hit rock bottom and it is the best and the freest place I have ever been at. My tears are almost sweet 

(via thefreenomad)

(via abagond)

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I pointed out to you the stars and all you saw was the tip of my finger.

 -African Proverb (via africanstories)
Beautiful definition of existentialism 

Beautiful definition of existentialism 

(via zuleikha-deactivated20121202)

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Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (via rubeo)
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We focus on race, but rarely on the everyday system of terror and pleasure that in varying proportions makes race so useful a category of difference. But siting and citing everyday racism is almost like stating a belief in the paranormal. Racism dismembers the “real” — so robs and eviscerates it that nothing and no one can appear as “whole” in its strange and brutal refraction.

The Erotic Life of Racism, Sharon P. Hollard  (via abolitionista)

(via so-treu)

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I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter (via whatshewanted)

(via silas216)

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Colorism is tricky because it masks itself in the language of choice. “I like to date light skinned girls,” one guy said. Though really it is a preference derived from social pressure. Whiteness dominates and is seen as the most powerful, most influential, most useful, and for as long as this holds, aspirations of beauty will flow in its direction. Colorism is something people of colour do to themselves (though not by themselves) because the need for acceptance can be so overwhelming.

On Being A Dark Skinned Black Woman | Clutch Magazine

Something to think about…

(via biyuti)

Amazing article (*_*)

(via biyuti)

Reparations.

chucklew:

Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare, with his hand on his heart, that he must come to the aid of the poor, underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: “It’s just a reparation which will be paid to us.”

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 102.