Ed Reed Quotes

All the legislation in the world cannot fix what is wrong with America.

I think that's something that's hard for this country to address, is what the real issues are and coming to the point where we can admit that these are issues. Once we admit that, we can deal with it, we can fix them, and we can make this country and these communities a better place.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter.

Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.

As of today, we do not need expert reports by the authoritative analytical institutions to realise that the reasons for such a situation in our community lie in global inequality, poverty and illiteracy.

I think we've made tremendous progress on racism. We've even made progress on war. We've made almost no progress on poverty.

In the days and months I spent walking through the various communities of this city, I found that Chicago did not work for everyone, however.

Corporate America cannot afford to remain silent or passive about the downward spiral we are undergoing. It cannot turn a blind eye to how difficult the experience of life is for so many of their customers.

This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.

Hurricane Katrina was a disaster. It exposed the soft underbelly of America when it comes to race and class.

You know there's problems - you can see all the poverty and so on - but it's quite another matter to know what you can do about it.

We have a lot of societal problems that we have to fix in the 1990s.

We must acknowledge that issues like systemic racism, economic inequality, and the achievement gap are the result of manmade policies.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

Criminality is always the result of poverty. Countries that experience such a fundamental change as we have - we had the apartheid regime and must now develop a multicultural democracy - must necessarily pass through a phase of high crime rates.

Historic changes and challenges. Breakthroughs in human knowledge and opportunity. And yet, for vast numbers across the globe, the daily realities have not altered.

Poverty and lack of education are ruining our planet.

We've got to stop focusing solely on the symptoms of crime, and start caring about the causes as well.

As African-Americans, we often spend our time and energy blaming other people for the problems we see around us.

Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.

A shining city is perhaps all the President [Ronald Reagan] sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another part to the shining city. In this part of the shining city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, and more people who need help and can't find it.

We will not settle for a state that will settle for an underclass.

Poverty is a corrosive brew, capable of eating away at the underpinnings of democratic life itself.

White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White society created it; white institutions maintain it; and white society condones it.

African American Communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been before. Ever, ever, ever.