Benjamin Watson Quotes

I think that part of the issue here is when people hear 'Black Lives Matter,' sometimes they think that someone is saying your life doesn't matter, and that's not what 'Black Lives Matter,' at least to me, is saying.

We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that's not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that black lives matter, too.

I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.

When people of color and their allies say today that Black Lives Matter, the nation must hear and see it through the lens of all that has come before and understand that they speak truth.

Black lives do matter, and our lives do hold value.

I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.

Saying 'black lives matter' both literally and figuratively restores people's dignity.

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us.

Black Lives Matter has become what black communities all over the world have needed it to become. At times, it is a hashtag; at other moments, it is a declaration, a cry of rage, a sharing of light. It has become a movement that is international, worldwide in its scope of liberation for black and oppressed people everywhere.

All lives matter when black lives matter and no lives are more important than black lives.

Electing the first African-American president was a tremendous accomplishment, but it hasn't erased racism.

I am so proud to be black. I am, nevertheless, tired of the oppression. We need to develop and support a cohesive black agenda. We need to do what leaders have suggested since slavery. We need to recognize that while we are not monolithic, there is power in embracing a common agenda.

Black people, we are fully deserving of the room and space to fully express our humanity. This is what Black Lives Matter is truly about.

We believe that when you make Black America better - you make all of America better.

One must learn how to be black in America.

Unlike earlier black-power movements that tried to fight or segregate for self-preservation, Black Lives Matter aligns with the dead, continues the mourning, and refuses the forgetting in front of all of us.

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.

What I know about this world is that white people will take care of themselves. And what I have learned is that if you are where they are on an equal basis, they cannot take care of themselves without taking care of you.

Of course, the opposite of white privilege is not blackness, as many of us seemed to think then; the opposite of white privilege is working to dismantle that privilege. But my particular hip-hop generation proved to be very serious about figuring it all out and staying engaged.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

A majority of Americans want redemption for racism - for our terrible, destructive racist past - and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive.

What worries me is that 'post-racial' America is not that different from the Americas that have preceded us, and it might not ever be.

As part of the realization of the aim to eradicate racism in our country, we must strive to create and strengthen a black capitalist class… because we come from among the black oppressed, many among us feel embarrassed to state this goal as nakedly as we should.

the enemies of the colored race who are opposed to their progress and freedom assert that there is no virtue among them.