Feminista Jones

"I have been really focused on this idea that I’m coming from a line of people who started this work, and I have to continue"

"I’m really glad to be a part of that because I think that I represent so many — I hate to say it — marginalized identities: I am African American. I am a woman. I am a queer person. I am disabled. I’ve got a lot of these things going on that inform my daily life"

"So any opportunity I have to be a part of a forum (to) engage people to celebrate and to amplify diverse voices and to hold on — in the face of all these attacks on (diversity, equity and inclusion), things like that — to the very simple idea that diversity makes us better, that’s always a good thing"

"I noticed that students are more receptive to videos than they are to assigned readings and things like that. And so I’m trying to negotiate, ‘How do we make that happen?’ How do I let them know that this is still an ongoing thing: That 100 years ago, we were still talking about issues of racial discrimination, sexist discrimination. That this is not a new thing? … So, trying to bridge those gaps is a little bit difficult. And I think that there is a lot of apathy"

"I, as an older person need to be like, ‘All right, I’ll work with you on this.’ I’ve tried to pass this torch, you know, and be supportive, but we can’t just point fingers at them and be like, ‘Oh, they’re lazy. They don’t want to do anything"

"The people who tend to call themselves allies are usually the people with privilege, who will not have a mutual benefit from whatever they're trying to help with"

"The mutual benefit would be, 'Wow, now both black and white people won't be suspected of shoplifting"

"Well, white people already had that. So, what do they gain out of this? Black people are free to shop. But what do the white people get [that they didn't already have]"

"This really makes sense because what we're doing is conspiring to shut down entire systems of oppression"

"We are challenging that system and so we have to conspire. We have to plot and plan the ways in which we can tear those systems down"

"The last thing I'm interested in is someone who is slapping a label on themselve as a way to be recognized as a good person"

"There’s a privilege to being able to go to school and see someone standing at the front that looks like you. It’s not until you get the teacher who looks like you, who’s teaching a class on African American studies. That changed my life. I said, ‘What is this? I did not know any of this!’ It was the first time that I felt like I was learning something about where I came from that was not revolving around being subservient to someone else or less than someone else"

"I read “The Education of The Negro Prior To 1861” and I understood what Carter G. Woodson was talking about. The pain that I felt that it took me becoming an adult to first learn these things was traumatizing to me. And all I could think to myself was, ‘What about everyone else? They’re not studying themselves. What will they become?’ And that’s where we get stuck in a lot of things"

"What our ancestors and elders have been trying to do is make things better for each generation. But we equate better with proximity to whiteness and we have to stop doing that… Sometimes the consequence is a separation from cultural traditions and affinity… But cultural memory is strong. Even when you are displaced or removed or separated from each other, that memory is there"

"We are all the same people. Understand that the boat just went to different places. We originated in the same spots. We are all the same"

"No one wants to hear that we might be in a psychological state that weakens us or renders us unable to serve them; we must be strong at all times and no one wants to hear otherwise"

"But when Black women sing, we seem to be given permission to perform pain for others to consume. People demand that Black women singers emote suffering and go so far as to call it their “best” music"

"Happiness and joy don’t sell as well as suffering and crawling our ways up seemingly insurmountable hills. No, people are incredibly entertained by Black women’s suffering to the point of wishing ill upon us to see what the output will be"