A Quote by Assata Shakur

Any Black person in amerika [sic], if they are being honest with themselves, have got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person isn't free to walk down the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.
When you're walking down a street and you are a brown-skinned person or you're a person that lives in an immigrant community, there's no differentiating on - solely on the basis of what you look like. They don't walk down the street saying, hi, I'm an immigrant; I'm here legally or not.
When I have my Afro and walk down the street, there's no doubt that I'm black. With this [straightened] hair, if I talk about being black on air, viewers write and say, "You're black?!" I feel [straightening your hair] is giving up a sense of your identity. Let's be honest: It's an effort to look Anglo-Saxon.
I'm from the South, where if you walk down the street and there's somebody behind you talking with a Southern accent, you can't tell whether it's a black or a white person.
We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular. There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. After all we have been through, just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.
It's funny, our beauty standard has become harder and tougher because we live in a tough age. I don't think anyone wants to walk down the street and feel vulnerable. You want to walk down the street and feel like you're in control.
Mexico scares me. There's no law, there's wild dogs and people driving their ATVs down the street. I like to know I can walk down the street and not be arrested for something dumb and have to pay to get my way out.
...he said, with sort of a little derisive smile, "How can you walk down the street with all this stuff going on inside you?" I said, "I don't know how you can walk down the street with nothing going on inside you.
As an author, I don't really think too much about being a celebrity. It's not like being a movie star or a TV star. It's not as if people recognize me when I walk down the street. That hardly ever happens, and it's just as well. But it is great when people know my books, when I walk through an airport and see them in the bookstore, or when I see someone reading a book on a plane or on a train, and it's something I've written. That's a wonderful feeling.
When I walk out into the street or go to the toilet, I don't think of myself as being black. Of course, other people think of me as black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is a part of me.
I don't know if I want to walk down the street and have everyone staring. I think that would be awful. I'm a pretty shy person, really.
People speaking into handheld devices while they walk down the street and saying to the device, "I'm walking down the street now." People are enslaved. I was just up in the country for a few days last week and it was great: no television, no telephone, no nothing. I walked through the woods, sat around, smoked. And it was lovely. I think the desire to be free has mutated, and we now live in an era when the slaves celebrate their slavery - this whole corporate concept of being part of a "team" at work.
I was a very private person. I never had an open social media account. So, for me to walk down the street and have people say, 'Hey, Tan!' I turn around thinking, 'Do I know you?'
If you have an all-white neighborhood you don't call it a segregated neighborhood. But you call an all-black neighborhood a segregated neighborhood. And why? Because the segregated neighborhood is the one that's controlled by the ou - from the outside by others, but a separate neighborhood is a neighborhood that is independent, it's equal, it can do - it can stand on its own two feet, such as the neighborhood. It's an independent, free neighborhood, free community.
I just want to be known as a very normal person and be treated as that and be able to walk down the street like anyone else.
And she didn't once say anything about this being a sin. It used to be I got the word sin slapped in my face every time I did something wrong, but come on, when you live in a sin-free family with sin-free parents and a sin-free sister, well, you can't help but sin a little extra on their behalf.
All I want to say to people, man, is, "Yo, you see me walking down the street and I got a little bop in my walk, don't think because I've got a bop in my walk I'm trying to be all that. The bop in my walk is because I'm just like you, man. I bop when I walk." Know what I'm saying? I'm proud. If you see me smiling, standing straight up, gold around my neck, it's not because I'm conceited. It's because I'm proud of what I achieved. I made this. I worked hard for this. That's all this is about.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!