Mark Bradford Quotes

If power is abstraction, which many black men, black women, and people of color have very little voice in, well, then I want to sit at the table.

The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color.

The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.

We want to make sure people know deeply about the trans community and deeply about Black Lives Matter so that people can act in solidarity.

When some people rejoin with “All Lives Matter” they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve.

You know, I had a new kind of thought on Black Lives Matter and the All Lives Matter thing. And the best way to explain it is if we're all sitting around at a table having dinner, and everybody gets pie except for you and you say, my pie matters, I don't have pie, and everybody at the table looks at you and says, I know, all pie matters, it shows that the people at the table aren't really listening.

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or ... and oppression of others.

I talked to a lot of Black Lives activists in various states. What I learned is that the relationship of police departments around the country with the black community is far, far more severe and awful than I had originally known.

The Congressional Black Caucus is a moral fraud. It's amazing how many people are afraid of saying that

I would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it is extremely important to look at the predicament of black people within the context of the globalization of capital.

If you're black living in the community and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.

It doesn't do any good to just be on the side of black people. The funnier comedic position is to be on the side of oppressed people in general.

In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.

Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.

The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.

The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.

What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we loved black culture?

The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.

The fact is in a city like Chicago, for example, unemployment in the black community is around 20 percent for adults, 35 percent for youth, they bail out the banks, public schools, there is a deep divide. We need a plan for reconstruction and redevelopment and I hope that - police are the gatekeepers but behind that gate are these problems of disparities and injustice.

I'M HOPELESS, because I've lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I'm not surprised and at some point my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails.

One of the things that I'm really concerned about is that people who don't have power are not priorities for people in public life. Maybe it's always been that way, but I see it more starkly now.

I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive it (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.

There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.

When a black person has no electricity, no water, they call it the ghetto. When white people have no electricity and no water, they call it camping.

I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities...on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but your humanity.