Mark Fisher Quotes

Terrorism is not new to black people.

Slavery was our original sin. Race, our continuing dilemma.

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

What's unique about America is that the country itself was built upon oppression, it's in the very foundation.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.

Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.

When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.

My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.

Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights - compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.

There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

The issue is whether or not Americans such as myself ... will have to suffer the indignity of being reminded time and time again that at one point in this country's history, we were human chattel. This vote is about race ... and the single most painful episode in American history.

Sir, the people of the northern states are cowards. Slavery has made cowards of them all. The whites are afraid of each other, and the blacks are afraid of the whites. You can effect nothing among such people

We must strip away slogans such as “states’ rights.” We must attach the “wrongs” of society.

One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin…. The negro today asks for justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we answer “Patience.”

The Declaration of Independence was written by white men for white men.

… that's what I do. The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an' I go round a'testifyin', an' showin' on 'em their sins agin my people

What did you expect? I don’t know why you’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.

Slavery is the nagging, unrelenting shame of America that continues to deny the true promise of the country to too many its citizens. If we ever hope to change that, we must begin by owning our past and acknowledging the shame, the sin, the injustice, and the ongoing consequences of enslaving an entire race of people.

The brutality of apartheid drains you of that emotion of fear if you have gone through everything you can be put through in the process of harassment.