Aaron McGruder Quotes
Don’t speak to the … converted. Don’t talk to a bunch of [fools] who agree with you. That’s not doing anything. Get your message out to people who would not ordinarily hear anything conscious. It’s not easy, but we have to be in the business of mainstreaming radicalism.
McGruder writes a very popular comic strip called “Boondocks.” The main character, which is quoted here, is a politically minded Black adolescent named Huey Freeman.
Aaron McGruder, [Huey Freeman], Cartoonist, Interview, The Crisis, September/October 2003
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is not only attributed by reliable sources but apparently Roosevelt had said this on several occasions. The word “radical” has had different shades of meaning at different periods of American History. The origin of the word from the Latin means someone who wishes to change things very rapidly and not gradually. In the time of the Civil War, the majority of the Republicans proudly referred to themselves as “radicals” or “radical Republicans” because they wanted to abolish slavery immediately. In the late 19th century the word “radical” referred to anarchists. From the Russian Revolution onward “radicals” were communists who presumably wanted to change governments throughout the work through revolution—very rapid change. However, in the early 20th century, radicals were people who wanted to reform and regulate businesses and monopolies rapidly and it is this sense he was a radical. But by style, he was a radical in most things in that he wanted to change things and change them rapidly.
Aaron Vincent McGruder is an American writer, lecturer, producer, screenwriter and cartoonist best known for writing and drawing The Boondocks, a Universal Press Syndicate comic strip and its animated TV series adaptation for which he was the creator, executive producer, and head writer.
