

“It never ceased to amaze me how white scholars could quibble, making simple things more complicated than they really were. What is more central in the Christian Bible than the exodus and Jesus stories and the prophetic call for justice for the poor?”
― Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian
― Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian

“The lynching tree is the most potent symbol of the trouble nobody knows that blacks have seen but do not talk about because the pain of remembering鈥攙isions of black bodies dangling from southern trees, surrounded by jeering white mobs鈥攊s almost too excruciating to recall. In that era, the lynching tree joined the cross as the most emotionally charged symbols in the African American community鈥攕ymbols that represented both death and the promise of redemption, judgment and the offer of mercy, suffering and the power of hope. Both the cross and the lynching tree represented the worst in human beings and at the same time 鈥渁n unquenchable ontological thirst鈥漑1] for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning.”
― The Cross and the Lynching Tree
― The Cross and the Lynching Tree

“Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.”
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“If whites do not get off the backs of blacks, they must expect that blacks will literally throw them off by whatever means are at their disposal. This is the meaning of Black Power. Depending on the response of whites, it means that emancipation may even have to take the form of outright rebellion. No one can really say what form the oppressed must take in relieving their oppression. But if blacks are pushed to the point of unendurable pain, with no option but a violent affirmation of their own being, then violence is to be expected.”
― Black Theology and Black Power
― Black Theology and Black Power

“In our era, it is not enough to be tolerant. You tolerate mosquitoes in the summer, a rattle in an engine, the gray slush that collects at the crosswalk in winter. You tolerate what you would rather not have to deal with and wish would go away. It is no honor to be tolerated. Every spiritual tradition says love your neighbor as yourself, not tolerate them.”
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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