Latest Angela Davis Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I think we have to really focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past. I think we have to seek to create coalitional strategies that go beyond racial lines. We need to bring black communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican communities, Asian American communities together.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Past, Issues

• We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity black political unity is possible.

  Angela Davis

  Struggle, People, Political

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I 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

  Brother, Kings, Responsibility

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn't happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was.

  Angela Davis

  Struggle, Thinking, Impact

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• We can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community.

  Angela Davis

  Community, Black, Homogeneous

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Community, Black

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• The de industrialization of the US. economy based on the migration of corporations into third world areas where labor is very cheap and thus more profitable for these companies creates on the one hand conditions in those countries that encourage people to emigrate to the US. in search of a better life. On the other hand, it creates conditions here that send more black people into the alternative economies, the drug economies, women into economies in sexual services, and sends them into the prison industrial complex.

  Angela Davis

  Country, Hands, People

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• Often young black people are looking towards the alternative economies. They are looking towards the drug economy.... the economies that are going to that apparently will produce some kind of material gain for them.

  Angela Davis

  People, Drug, Black

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance.

  Angela Davis

  Organization, Want, Assuming

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• You can't criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently.

  Angela Davis

  People, Criticize, Decent

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy.

  Angela Davis

  Meaningful, Brother, Jobs

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• Not only the brothers on the street but the middle class brothers are also identifying with the gangster rappers because of the extent to which this music circulates. It becomes possible for the - not only the young middle class men, but it becomes possible for young middle class white men and young men of other racial communities to identify with the misogyny of gangster rap.

  Angela Davis

  Brother, Rap, Men

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I think it's important for us to recognize that although historically black communities have been very progressive with respect to issues of race and with respect to struggles for racial equality, that does not necessarily translate into progressive positions on gender issues, progressive positions on issues of sexuality and in the latter 1990s we have to recognize the intersectionality, the interconnectedness of all of these institutions and attitudes.

  Angela Davis

  Attitude, Struggle, Thinking

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March.

  Angela Davis

  Struggle, Men, Thinking

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Class, Black

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I think that the response to the OJ Simpson trial was based on a kind of sensibility that emerged out of the many campaigns to defend black communities against police violence.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Police Violence, Community

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I do think it's extremely important to acknowledge the gains that were made by the civil rights movement, the black power movement.Institutional transformations happened directly as a result of the movements that people, unnamed people, organized and gave their lives to.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Rights, People

• I don't know whether the movement crashed as a result of the overwhelming character of the institutions we set out to change. I think repression had a lot to do with the dismantling of the movement and also the winning of certain victories had something to do with the inability of the movement to take those victories as the launching point for new goals and developing new strategies.

  Angela Davis

  Character, Thinking, Winning

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I don't think it's necessary to feel guilty. Because I know that I'm still doing the work that is going to help more sisters and brothers to challenge the whole criminal justice system, and I'm trying to use whatever knowledge I was able to acquire to continue to do the work in our communities that will move us forward.

  Angela Davis

  Brother, Moving, Thinking

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• As soon as I got out of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first of all, during the time I was in jail, there was an organization called the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted that it be called National United Committee to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners.

  Angela Davis

  Organization, Jail, Political

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities. The door is opened only so far. If some of us can squeeze through the crack of that door, then we owe it to those who have made those demands that the door be opened to use the knowledge or the skills that we acquire not only for ourselves but in the service of the community as well. This is something that I guess I decided a long time ago.

  Angela Davis

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Thinking

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I guess I would say first of all that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend to see these struggles and these goals in a relatively static way.

  Angela Davis

  Struggle, Goal, Way

  Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• Kids these days are kind of going back to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that stand for something.

  Angela Davis

  Kids, People, Example

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.

  Angela Davis

  Reading, Leader, Police

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.

• I'm thinking about some developments say in the 80s when the anti-apartheid movement began to claim more support and strength within the US. Black trade unionists played a really important role in developing this US anti-apartheid movement.

  Angela Davis

  Thinking, Support, Black

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org. 1997.