Quotes

Quotes from Angela Davis That We Should Be Thinking About Right Now

Wisdom on racial prejudice.

In light of what has taken place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I have decided to step down in this article and spotlight someone who I believe has better words to talk about what is currently taking place. I am outraged by what happened to George Floyd, but instead of centering myself and my voice, I will center the words of Angela Davis because it is not about me. I understand that as a light-skinned Latina, I still hold a lot of privilege.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Angela Davis, you’re missing out. She is a legend that has been revered by an entire generation and will continue to be revered throughout history.

Angela Davis became known for her involvement and acquittal for her supposed involvement in a politically charged murder case in the early 1970s. Influenced by her segregated upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, she joined the Black Panthers as a young woman. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was involved in a range of leftists causes including the second-wave feminist movement, an all-Black Communist Party, and the campaign against the Vietnam War. She’s received various awards for her work and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Time’s magazine named her “Woman of the Year” in 1971 and she made the 2020 list for “100 Women of the Year” edition.

Davis is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class (1980), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1999), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016).

She is powerful and her wisdom will be remembered long after she is gone, so without further ado, here are some quotes from Angela Davis that are especially important right now.

Quotes from Angela Davis That We Should Be Thinking About Right Now

On Racism

In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.

When Obama was elected president, a prisoner said “one black man in the White House doesn’t make up for one million black men in the Big House.

If we do not know how to meaningfully talk about racism, our actions will move in misleading directions.

I feel that if we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.

On Movements and Change

Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.”

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.

Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners.

But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory.

Anyway I don’t think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.

On Prisons

[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.

Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

On Optimism

I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.

It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

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