social fears Quotes

“Look! . . . What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife.”

“This is your child, and you’ll have to make the best of it. We’re going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as possible-some time to-day.”

“I think only the warrior exists in me now. Melba went away to hide. She was too frightened to stay here.”

“It felt as though we always had a white foot pressed against the back of our necks.”

“It felt as though we always had a white foot pressed against the back of our necks.”

“With the passage of time, I became increasingly aware of how all of the adults around me were living with constant fear and apprehension . . . I was feeling more and more vulnerable as I watched them continually struggle to solve the mystery of what white folks expected of them. They behaved as though it were an awful sin to overlook even one of those unspoken rules and step out of ‘their place,’ to cross some invisible line. And yet lots of discussions in my household were about how to cross that line, when to cross that line, and who could cross that line without getting hurt.”

“I ran to my room and fell onto the bed, burying my face in the pillow to hide the sobs that wrenched my insides. All my disappointment over not getting into Central High and the mob chase as well as the big sudden changes in my life over the past few weeks came crashing in on me.”

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t google.)”

“I smiled and sat down, suddenly aware of what being of Japanese ancestry was going to be like. I wouldn’t be faced with physical attack, or with overt shows of hatred. Rather, I would be seen as someone foreign, or as someone other than American, or perhaps not be seen at all.”

“It was that nigh that I discovered that most things that you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in the social niceties.”

“We are afraid to allow ourselves to blossom fully because of the general disapproval that fills our air whenever a ‘little lady’ forgets her place.”

“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race may evolve over time or lose much of its significance is hardly a reason to be struck blind. ”