"There is a need to understand that we are a culture created by a slave culture and that we still operate out of lessons learned and taught during a time when that system was intact. And so, many of the things that we learn, we learn there, the kind of women we learn how to be, the kind of men we learn how to be. If you can think of the batterers, the leading men of society beating people all the time and integrating it into their lives and into their personality across a 300-year period, you can’t tell me that’s not related to the violence we have to deal with. If you can — if I can tell you about the child abuse that a young child experiences who’s Black on a slave plantation, the battering that Black people experience, where you are whipped for anything, the sexual violence and sexual harassment, we’re talking about 300 years, formative culture in this country."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Activists from the United StatesComposers from the United StatesSocial activistsScholars and academics
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernice_Johnson_Reagon
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon (born Bernice Johnson; October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Freedom Singers in the Albany Movement in Georgia.
15 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Bernice Johnson Reagon →
Related Quotes
"The mighty, mighty voice of Bernice Reagon."
"The concept of "home" has a complex and sometimes convoluted history within Third World feminism. In an oft-cited ess…"
"We learn through doing. Bernice Johnson Reagon has said we're stumbling because we have to take the next step."
"If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition."
"We called ourselves, in those days — and I’m talking now about 1962, 1963 — sort of like a singing newspaper. We saw …"
"The African American culture is just a rich singing culture. When you take a culture like that and move it into a kin…"
"Slavery was a very violent system. And slavery did not just happen in the South; it happened to the nation. So, as a …"
"I’m a historian and a radical, and I don’t see resurging something from the past to address contemporary issues. I th…"
"You actually don’t have to lie about what kind of country it is, that there’s a maturity that’s implied in being able…"
"It is very difficult to be born female in this country and not be — not be fearful. One of the first lessons you get …"