1. So long as prejudice — whether religious, racial, patriotic, political or sectarian — continues to exist among mankind, universal peace cannot become a reality in the world. From the earliest history of man down to the present time all the wars and bloodshed which have taken place were caused either by religious, racial, political or sectarian bias.
So long as this aping of the past persisteth, just so long will the foundations of the social order be blown to the four winds, just so long will humanity be continually exposed to direst peril. Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i Faith
2. The light of men is Justice. Quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men. The ocean of divine wisdom surgeth within this exalted word, … Verily I say, whatever is sent down from the heaven of the Will of God is the means for the establishment of order in the world and the instrument for promoting unity and fellowship among its peoples. Thus hath the Tongue of this Wronged One spoken from His Most Great Prison. Baha’u’llah, The Baha’i Faith
3. There has been a huge upswelling of empathy and calls for social and economic justice in the marches now encircling the globe. George Floyd’s name and “Black lives matter’ are being chanted, along with calls for justice, from Milan to Berlin, Cardiff to Toronto. London to Sydney, Brazil to Ethiopia. People are asking, what is Justice? … It is treating other human beings with dignity, honoring them as people of value, protecting their rights to life, freedom and fair treatment and expecting them to be accountable to protect ours.
Linda Kavelin-Popov, Dave Feldman, Justice: A Whole New World: 7 Virtues for the Great Reset
4. Our nations summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay, … And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. My parents wanted to teach us that the America they loved harbored injustices and systemic racism, yet it was a union we had a duty to try to perfect. Fifty-two years later, not nearly enough has changed. Entrenched bigotry and senseless violence against African-Americans persist. We still have much to do to make this a truly equal and just America, from eradicating police brutality and reforming the criminal justice system, to ensuring access to affordable housing, quality health care and education, and decent jobs for all regardless of the color of their skin. Susan E. Rice, Ambassador the UN, National Security Advisor to President Obama
6. The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. Mark Twain
7. We don’t know when these protests will subside. We hope and pray that no one else will be killed. But we also know that very little will change. The anger and the frustration we see playing out once again in our streets is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as a country from our original sin of slavery. This is our pandemic. It infects all of us, and in 400 years we’ve yet to find a vaccine. George Clooney, Actor
8. Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publicly acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade. Opal Tometi, Nigerian-American human rights activist, She is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
9. To the American Baha’is, 1938:
Let the white make a supreme effort in their resolve to contribute their share to the solution of this problem, to abandon once for all their usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, to correct their tendency towards revealing a patronizing attitude towards the members of the other race, to persuade them through their intimate, spontaneous and informal association with them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions, and to master their impatience of any lack of responsiveness on the part of a people who have received, for so long a period, such grievous and slow-healing wounds. Let the Negroes, through a corresponding effort on their part, show by every means in their power the warmth of their response, their readiness to forget the past, and their ability to
wipe out every trace of suspicion that may still linger in their hearts and minds.
Let neither think that the solution of so vast a problem is a matter that exclusively concerns the other. Let neither think that such a problem can either easily or immediately be resolved….
Let neither think that anything short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort, can succeed in blotting out the stain which this patent evil has left on the fair name of their common country. Shoghi Effendi, 1938, The Baha’i Faith
10. Assimilation and melting into the American pot has always been easier [for white people]. It’s very hard for blackfolk to melt into the pot. When we melt into the pot we usually become charred crust at the bottom. We have to be able to persevere by
different tactics and methods. Chuck D, Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary, Vol. 1
11. Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible. A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone. Maya Angelou
12. Knowing how the world enjoys blackness and seeing what happened to George, we black people get the feeling that people want our culture but they do not want us. In other words, you want my talent but you don’t want me. There is a false idea that racism, and in this case anti-blackness, is just name-calling and physical violence when it’s so much more insidious than that.
One of my favourite thinkers is a woman called Amanda Seales and I feel it deeply when she says this: ‘You cannot enjoy the rhythm and ignore the blues.’ And I say that with my chest. Clara Amfo, British radio DJ, BBC Radio
13. In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. Toni Morrison
14. People don’t realize what’s really going on in this country. There are a lot things that are going on that are unjust. People aren’t being held accountable for. And that’s something that needs to change. That’s something that this country stands for: freedom, liberty and justice for all.
Colin Kaepernick
15. It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile; people of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible. Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why is it Sor Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
16. Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed. Will Smith
17. Racism, one of the most baneful and persistent evils, is a major barrier to peace. Its practice perpetrates too outrageous a violation of the dignity of human beings to be countenanced under any pretext. Racism retards the unfoldment of the boundless potentialities of its victims, corrupts its perpetrators, and blights human progress. The Univesal House of Justice, The Baha’i Faith
18. To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo. Desmond Tutu, The Christian Faith
19. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.
What’s the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.” But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist.” Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
20. Already, the American mind was accomplishing that indispensable intellectual activity of someone consumed with racist ideas: individualizing White negativity and generalizing Black negativity. Negative behavior by any Black person became proof of what was wrong with Black people, while negative behavior by any White person only proved what was wrong with that person. Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist ideas in America
21. There are many well-meaning people who are striving to improve society by fighting its evils, which usually means contending against individuals, groups, or institutions who are seen as oppressive, unjust, or corrupt. Yet no matter how high- minded a particular cause might be, if it is advanced through contention and confrontation, it merely provokes and intensifies the flame of a countermovement initiated by others who act on what they consider to be their own high-minded beliefs. Real solutions remain elusive. The cycle of contention continues without end, with one group after the other seizing enough power to implement its views before becoming overcome by those in opposition. One need only look to the endless mutations of racist oppression over hundreds of years, adapting so as to undermine every social advance in that area.
The Universal House of Justice, The Baha’i Faith, 2018
22. I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color. I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir,” or already “gets it. White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will
put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing self-awareness, continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how we do so.
Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why is it Sor Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
23. The diversity in the human family should be the cause of love and harmony, as it is in music where many different notes blend together in the making of a perfect chord. If you meet those of a different race and color from yourself, do not mistrust them, and withdraw yourself into your shell of conventionality, but rather be glad and show them kindness.
In the world of being the meeting is blessed when the white and colored races meet together with infinite spiritual love and heavenly harmony. Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i Faith
24. The essence of economic inequality is borne out in a simple fact: there are 400 billionaires in the United States and 45 million people living in poverty. These are not parallel facts; they are intersecting facts. There are 400 American billionaires because there are 45 million people living in poverty. Profit comes at the expense of the living wage. Corporate executives, university presidents, and capitalists in general are living the good life–because so many others are living a life of hardship. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, American academic, writer, and activist, From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation
25. Overstep not the bounds of moderation, and deal justly with them that serve thee. Bestow upon them according to their needs and not to the extent that will enable them to lay up riches for themselves, to deck their persons, to embellish their homes, to acquire the things that are of no benefit unto them, and to be numbered with the extravagant. Deal with them with undeviating justice, so that none among them may either suffer want, or be pampered with luxuries. This is but manifest justice. …Let My counsel be acceptable to thee, and strive thou to rule with equity among men, that God may exalt thy name and spread abroad the fame of thy justice in all the world.
Bahá’u’lláh, Letters to the Kings and Rulers, 1867-68, The Baha’i Faith
26. To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right- inferior or superior- with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do. Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
27. The utterance of God is a lamp, whose light is these words: Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship. He Who is the Daystar of Truth beareth Me witness! So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. The One true God, He Who knoweth all things, Himself testifieth to the truth of these words. Baha’u’llah, The Baha’i Faith
28. I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.
Miyomoto Musashi, 1584-1645, Japanese, philosopher, and writer.
29. I am where I am because of the bridges that I crossed. Sojourner Truth was a bridge. Harriet Tubman was a bridge. Ida B. Wells was a bridge. Madame C.J. Walker was a bridge. Fannie Lou Hamer was a bridge. Oprah Winfrey
30. Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love. In recent days, we’ve seen what it looks like when people of all races, ethnicities, genders and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together, even as SWAT teams and tanks roll in. We’ve seen our faces in another American mirror – a reflection of the best of who we are and what we can become. These images may not have dominated the media coverage, but I’ve glimpsed in a foggy mirror scenes of a beautiful, courageous nation struggling to be born.
Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, Article in the NY Times, June 8, 2020
31. The woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the rotten community, now so shattered by war and poverty and racism. I have great faith in the power of women who will dedicate themselves whole-heartedly to the task of remaking our society. Coretta Scott King
32. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Nelson Mandela
33. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. Martin Luther King Jr.
34. Naught but the celestial potency of the Word of God, which ruleth and transcendeth the realities of all things, is capable of harmonizing the divergent thoughts, sentiments, ideas, and convictions of the children of men.
Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i Faith
35. We entreat God to deliver the light of equity and the sun of justice from the thick clouds of waywardness, and cause them to shine forth upon men. No light can compare with the light of justice. The establishment of order in the world and the tranquility of the nations depend upon it. Baha’u’llah, The Baha’i Faith
36. O Thou kind Lord! This gathering is turning to Thee. These hearts are radiant with Thy love. These minds and spirits are exhilarated by the message of Thy glad-tidings. O God! Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world. O God! This American nation is worthy of Thy favors and is deserving of Thy mercy. Make it precious and near to Thee through Thy bounty and bestowal.
Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i Faith