A Quote by Stacey Abrams
Here in Georgia, we continue to grapple with our own vestiges of hate. The image carved into Stone Mountain, like Confederate monuments across this state, stand as constant reminders of racism, intolerance, and division.
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Confederate monuments belong in museums where we can study and reflect on that terrible history, not in places of honor across our state.
We must ask ourselves: Are we a confident, forward-looking nation that builds monuments - like DACA - to hope and determination? Or are we a nation that is turned inward, lauding monuments to intolerance and division?
There is a national climate here. We're seeing a rise in hate speech, in intolerance, in racism, in division.
All over France, in every city there stand cathedrals like this one, triumphant monuments of the past. They tower over the homes of our people like mighty guardians, keeping alive the invincible faith of the Christian. Every arch, every column, every statue is a carved leaf out of our history, a book in stone, glorifying the spirit of France.
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
There's got to be a zero tolerance to racism, anti-Semitism, any form of division and intolerance.
Tolerance is carved into the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intolerance should not be carved into the U.S. Constitution.
We continue to confront racism from our past and our present, which is why we must hold everyone, from the highest offices to our own families, accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is - wrong.
I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.
Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere "survivals" - as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people's expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn't care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it's still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don't look like you.
A loving God who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our own making as much as if we carved Him out of stone.
Oh, he was just angry, we tell ourselves when someone blurts out something he later apologizes for. But a word, once spoken, lingers forever; to keep peace we pretend to forget, but we never do. Strange that a spoken word can have such lasting power when words carved on stone monuments vanish in spite of all our efforts to preserve them. What we would lose persists, lodged in our minds, and what we would keep is lost to water, moths, moss.
I grew up partially around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in that part of the country, there was always this aura of mythology and palpable sense of otherness about being a Southerner.
Jake 'The Snake' Roberts of Stone Mountain, Georgia, was the darkest! I mean, he could've been a movie villain, he was so intense! He also had the hardest finishing move of all time, the DDT.
My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.
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