“As black people, our lives are not tragedies. I will keep fighting against that narrative. Our lives are survival stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. These stories are about joy and celebration and our inherent power. No-one has the capacity to steal our joy. We must resist, resist and keep resisting. We refuse to be annihilated.”
― Diriye Osman

“Let’s sing the song of victory,
There ain’t no place for savagery no more.
Let’s loosen the knots of tradition,
There ain’t no time for rigidity no more.
Don’t you hear the siren my friend,
Can’t you feel the rising sun!
Don’t you hear the footsteps of dawn,
It’s time to let go of all things barbarian.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Call The People: My World My Responsibility

“It’s not putting black lives on a pedestal, I don’t even know what that means,” I said, my heart beating fast. “It’s saying that black lives, at this point, and historically, do not, and have not mattered, and that they should!”
I looked first at Gina, then around the room to see if anyone was going to back me up. Instead, I was met with what I’d been trying to pretend hadn’t always been a room full of white not-quite-liberals whose opinions, like their money, had been inherited.”
― Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie

“Don’t it give you the goose pimples when you realize that white people can kill us and get away with it? Just think of it! We are walkin’ targets everywhere we go—on the subway, in the street, everywhere.”
― Alice Childress, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life

“Police, the literal progeny of slave catchers, meant harm to out community, and the race or class of any one officer, nor the good heart of an officer, could change that. No isolated acts of decency could wholly change an organization that became and institution that was created not to protect but to catch, control and kill us.”
― Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

“If a man, woman, or child of color dies in this dizzying world of theirs, trust that OUR reincarnation wouldn’t come in the form of no goddamn tree. We would be buried as cannabis. A beautiful people with the perfect hue, doomed to be routinely smoked by those with seeming unfettered impunity, the…”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“…paradise is a world where everything
is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun…”
― Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead

“They took one look at me,
And hated my black face.
They took one look at me,
And decided on my fate.
They took one look at me,
And forced an unknown fear.
They took one look at me,
And caused the shed of tears.
They took one look at me,
And decided I was wrong.
They took one look at me,
And now I’m singing the slave mans song…”
― N’Zuri Za Austin

What if racism is so perfect, it made you believe the boycotting and peaceful protests of the civil rights movement actually changed policies, but in actuality policies were gonna change anyway.

“Hell, let them sit whereever they want on the bus. Just don’t sit with them. Let them into our schools, the teachers will still teach from a eurocentric curriculum anyway. Let them eat with us, they’ll need the energy and strength to build our homes.”

Racism is a perfect system with an impenetrable barrier.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“To my Black brothers and sisters, choose faith. As difficult as it is, choose faith—the kind of faith that we know without works is dead. The faith that raises awareness, educates the community, advocates, cares for the widows and feeds the orphans. Choose the faith that is compelled to action, but not controlled my anger.”
― Andrena Sawyer

And on that note, happy reading everyone.  Use this moment wisely.