Systemic Distrust Quotes

Mike Brown wasn't about race relations, nor Trayvon Martin or even Hurricane Katrina for that matter. It's about trust.

There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.

As a Coalition Government, we inherited a legacy of lack of trust and confidence in political system.

In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn't be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.

I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.

This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.

I trust the American People more than American Institutions.

Americans are losing faith in this country's ability to work for them.

It's not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it's that they no longer believe society's most powerful institutions are acting in their interests.

Of course, it's absurd that we trust the Tories with our day-to-day reality, as so many of them don't really inhabit it. Why elect people to run our schools and hospitals who choose not to go to those schools and hospitals?

This story is the ultimate example of American’s biggest political problem. We no longer have the attention span to deal with any twenty-first century crisis. We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it – who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum. Which is kind of a big problem, when you think about it.

For millions of Americans who happen to be black or brown, that core bond of trust with the government that governs closest to you, is too often broken.