A Quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The lives of African-Americans in this country are characterized by violence for most of our history. Much of that violence, at least to some extent, you know, done by the very state that's supposed to protect them.
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Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
Most violence is intra-racial, and much of the violence in African-American communities is a function of drug availability, joblessness and poverty.
Well, you know, the violence is mostly in Mexico itself, at least the violence that people are worried about. And so we want to make sure that violence does not spill over into our communities that are along the border.
If there is trouble in the country, neither I nor my people made it, and all that we have ever done, after much endurance on our part, is to maintain and uphold the constitution and institutions of our country, and to protect an injured, innocent, and persecuted people against misrule and mob violence.
There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for. I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.
I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.
Let me be very blunt: the heterosexual transmission of AIDS is, in Africa, a function of truly pathological promiscuity. So this is really a violence issue - not the same violence we deal with in Boston, where teenagers stab and shoot each other, but the violence of African men who are killing themselves, and killing African women and children, with pathological promiscuity.
At the meeting I argued that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we saved lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people? If we did not take the lead now, I said, we would soon be latecomers and followers to a movement we did not control.
The State lives by its very existence on the two-fold and pervasive employment of aggressive violence against the very liberty and property of individuals that it is supposed to be defending.
Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.
I think it's likely that the civilizing effect of literature has done most of the work, and still continues to do. Look at Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It proves beyond any shadow of doubt that violence has declined dramatically throughout the centuries. There are various reasons for it: the rise of the state, Leviathan, the monopoly of violence, children's rights, animal rights. They're all positive signs.
There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it's the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism.
Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy... In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.
At this crucial crossroads of history, we join to call on the world to recognize that violence begets violence; that nuclear proliferation benefits no one; that we can, we will, and we must find other ways to protect ourselves, our nations and our future: for it is not sufficient to have peace in our time, but, instead, we must leave a peaceful world to our children.
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