When someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person whoโs asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.
Angela DavisWe donโt go further than what Marx called the exchange value of the actual object - we donโt think about the relations that that object embodies - and were important to the production of that object whether itโs our food or our clothes or our I-pads or all the materials we use to acquire an education at an institution like this. That would really be revolutionary to develop a habit of imagining the human relations and non human relations behind all of the objects that constitute our environment.
Angela DavisThe idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?
Angela DavisWe can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community.
Angela DavisI think we need to insist on a certain responsibility, which people have - particularly those who have made it into the ranks of the middle class because as [ Martin Luther] King said many years ago in a sense they have climbed out of the masses on the shoulders of their sisters and brothers and therefore, they do have some responsibility.
Angela Davis