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Angela Davis Quotes: From the Radical Black Philosopher

Angela Davis, a professor of philosophy, is often associated with the Black Panthers and with the black power politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as with feminism.

• Radical simply means grasping things at the root.

• To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

• Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.

• We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

• Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor -- because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.

• Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.

• The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that ones contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

• There is often as much heterogeneity within a black community, or more heterogeneity, than in cross-racial communities. An African-American woman might find it much easier to work together with a Chicana than with another black woman whose politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality would place her in an entirely different community.

What is problematic is the degree to which nationalism has become a paradigm for our community-building processes. We need to move away form such arguments as Well, shes not really black. She comes from such-and-such a place. Her hair is... She doesnt listen to our music, and

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