Between The World And Me — Quotes

Part 2

“The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority” (p. 78–79)

“Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made” (p. 82)

“But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined — Eric Garner’s anger, with Trayvon Martin’s mythical words (‘You are gonna die tonight’), with Sean Bell’s mistake of running with the wrong crowd, with me standing too close to the small-eyed boy pulling out” (p. 96)

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In American, it is traditional to destroy the black body — it is heritage” (p. 103).

“And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world’s prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value” (p. 131–132)