Systemic Ignorance Quotes

Some prison officials are determined to keep the people they lock in cages as ignorant as possible about the racial, social, and political forces that have made the United States the most punitive nation on earth. Perhaps they worry the truth might actually set the captives free.

Those who are privileged have little regard for history.

I think there is this whole part of America that people overlook. I think they know it's there, but they tend to overlook it, become ignorant to it, and refuse to see it for what it is.

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

Black people have slavery. And white people have our own thing-stuff we went though that hurt us that we have to cope with. Like when they took our slaves away. That was really hard for us. So it's pretty even.

Teachers know how to improve education, but they are a voice that is consistently overlooked or ignored.

What we eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.

When we send our children to school, they learn nothing about us other than we used to be cotton pickers. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. It was your grandfather's hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing.