A Quote by Susan Burton
I can remember, as a child, the happy days of us all piling into the car and going to the drive-in. And that was a weekly routine for my father. He was a proud black man, and that all sort of vanished as America began to export jobs.
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Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day? Well, that's where all the other jobs that once made us middle class are going, to that same magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel agency jobs vanished, never to return.
We have to build our own power. We have to win every single political office we can, where we have a majority of black people... The question for black people is not, when is the white man going to give us our rights, or when is he going to give us good education for our children, or when is he going to give us jobs-if the white man gives you anything-just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves.
My father had the most horrible racist rhetoric you ever heard, but he treated people all the same. I remember this rainstorm. A car broke down with these black people in it, and nobody would stop. My dad was a mechanic. He fixed the car for nothing. I remember looking at him when he got back in. He said, 'Well, they got those kids in the car.'
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
I'm the seventh child of George and Leona Douglas, and I don't ever remember a time when my father didn't work two jobs. When my mother was going to the grocery, or going to Mass, or trying to take care of seven kids in a run-down farmhouse.
The export market is based, on high-paying jobs. I`ve seen statistics that show that people make over 88 a year generally benefit from this because these are export jobs.
Astonishingly, American taxpayers now will be forced to finance a multi-billion dollar jobs program in Iraq. Suddenly the war is about jobs. We export our manufacturing jobs to Asia, and now we plan to export our welfare jobs to Iraq, all at the expense of the poor and the middle class here at home.
White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, 'We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here - have a nice day!'
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.
I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of my history. I'm proud of the women and the men who came before us who are black, and I'm proud of the women before me who are black and who have achieved so much, even though we have so much against us, and we don't have those doors opening for us every day.
In America, you drive car. In Soviet Russia, car drive you!
I remember 'Rain Man' with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman with all the Lamborghinis being lifted off the tanker. I was obsessed with this car. Absolutely obsessed with this car. It was my dream, and to finally drive one and own one was incredible.
Until White America can look through the eyes of a Black man, nothing will change. Even we as Black people sometimes don't want to face what's going on within our communities because some of us crossed over into a different tax bracket, but these issues affect the communities that raised us, so it affects us all.
Imagine if you had genuine, high-quality early-childhood education for every child, and suddenly every black child in America - but also every poor white child or Latino [child], but just stick with every black child in America - is getting a really good education. And they're graduating from high school at the same rates that whites are, and they are going to college at the same rates that whites are, and they are able to afford college at the same rates because the government has universal programs. So now they're all graduating.
For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?
A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.
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