Between the World and Me pt. 1 quotes

P-42 “White America is a syndicate…central to the belief in being white…without it, ‘white people’ would cease to exist…”

p-35/36 “You preserve your life because…your body, was as good as anyone’s…blood…as precious as jewels…You do not give up your body to the billy clubs of Birmingham Sheriffs….black hair must be guarded against the torture of processing and lye…black skin…from bleach…our noses…from modern surgery.”

p-34 “My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers — even the answers that they believed.”

p-33 “It does not matter that the intentions of individual educators were noble.” “‘Good intentions’ is a hall-pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream”

p-23 “To survive the neighborhood and shield my body. I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshake. I memorized a list of prohibited blocks. I learned the smell and feel of fighting weather”

p-22 “The crews, the young men who’d transmuted their fear into rage, were the greatest danger.”

p-20 “Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies.” “There were little white boys…and their only want was a popular girlfriend …only worry was poison oak.”

p-16 “Everyone had lost a child somehow, to the streets, to jail, to guns.” “I would hear it in Dad’s voice — Either I can beat him, or the police”

p-15 “I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew…full of grand boasts and bluster….against all evidence and odds, that they were the masters of their own lives…and their own bodies.”

p-14 “The fear lived on in their practical bop…slouching denim…big T-shirts, the calculated angle of their baseball caps, a catalog of behaviors and garments enlisted to inspire the belief that these boys were in firm possession of everything they desired.”

p-12 “America understands itself as ‘god’s handiwork’, but the black body is the clearest evidence that America is the work of men.”

p-9 “The elevation of the belief in being white, was…achieved through…pillaging of life, liberty, and land…the flaying of backs…strangling of dissidents…destruction of families…rape of mothers…sale of children; and other various acts…to deny…the right to be secure in and govern our own bodies.”

p-7 “Race is but the child of racism, not the father.”