3 posts tagged “quote”

“Genius and stupidity never stray from their respective paths; talent wanders to and fro, following every light.” - George Moore

Q: "How many color lines are there?"
A: Well ... I think there's an infinite amount of color lines.
My working definition of color here would have to be: that which is visually indicated through the eye ... and everybody has a different lens. The line is personal discretion, the point where we seek to devalue the worth of one thing over another or differentiate things from other things or ourselves from other people when everything is essentially a part of (to borrow from Paulo Coelho) "The Soul of the World."
DuBois' Color Line was simply black and white (as most color lines are monochromatic). Today most social theorist who discuss racial color lines have also adopted the "color of money" line into the conversation of race and class issues such as William Julius Wilson in his book, The Declining Importance of Race, which proposes that the only color that really matters is green and it even suggests that those of stereotyped racial groups transcend the barrier of race if they are green enough (doesn't mean they care about the environment). Regardless of the Color Line(s) that one is familiar with, the problems they promote can be best summed up by Frederick Douglass in his essay 'The Color Line':

When we see color that supports an image we wish to paint of ourselves rather than recognizing the array of colors our painted selves already embody ... some on opposite ends of the color line(s) spectrum, we subject our judgments to the disorder which confirms the non-conferable and pushes redemption further away. Some people look at everything through a 300mm lens losing everything in the periphery of their microscopic gaze. Every judgement is temporal. In allowing the perception of the colors others see we can move beyond the color line to recognize that the tiny speck of color that exists in others also exists in ourselves and as a part of this global community, we are all a part of the same painting.

This quote has been with me a while and it still resonates. It's hard for anyone to live on the ever changing plane of reality and be the same person they were yesterday or expect to be the same person they are today tomorrow.

“This isn’t a tale of heroic feats. It’s about [lives] running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams. Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty? Were our conclusions too rigid? Maybe. Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me anymore, at least I’m not the same me I was.”

- Ernesto “Che” Guevara The Motorcycle Diaries