For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President.
Howard ZinnThe rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.
Howard ZinnI will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I donโt want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: โThe cry of the poor is not always just, but if you donโt listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Howard ZinnAny humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.
Howard ZinnI am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
Howard ZinnThe cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Howard ZinnThe courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.
Howard Zinn