Opal Tometi Quotes
-
Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve.
-
From my youngest brother to immigrant women to black queer folks, those are the people who keep me going. When I think about their various acts of courage, it reminds me that I am not alone and that we can do even more, and we deserve more, so we have to keep going.
-
Implicit bias - our subconscious associations of race - permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it.
-
The valuation of profit over people impedes human rights across much of the world.
-
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.
-
African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life.
-
The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees.
-
Civility is the recognition that all people have dignity that's inherent to their person, no matter their religion, race, gender, sexuality, or ability.
-
If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities.
-
What we are oftentimes reminding people of is the fact that the history of police in the U.S. was that they were slave patrols. They were quite literally created in order to capture enslaved Africans.
-
Black Lives Matter has been viral, and people are taking it, appropriating it, and using it however they see fit.
-
For the U.S., a nation that boasts of being the land of the free, it does not live up to its ideal.
-
Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.
-
The reality is that anti-black racism is a global phenomenon, and it looks different in each context, but if you look at the outcomes, if you listen and look at the experiences, you will see that it's clear, and it's happening across the globe.
-
I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living.
-
Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe.
-
My parents being from Nigeria deeply informs all my social justice and human rights work.
-
There are always groups on campus that are doing amazing things. I know when I was in college, I was a student at the University of Arizona, working on my bachelor's in history, and I got involved with a number of different groups that were connected to different social justice issues that I cared about.
-
We created #BlackLivesMatter. We created a platform. We used our social media presence online in order to forward a conversation about what is taking place in black communities.
-
The U.S. government has rarely, if ever, used the criminal history of a certain immigrant population in determining if the whole community should be allowed to remain in the country under a humanitarian program, like TPS.
-
As we look ahead to our very diverse future, BAJI plans to continue to be at the forefront, uniting black communities to attain racial, social, and economic justice for all.
-
Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives.
-
Get involved in your neighborhood. That's how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement.
-
I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don't live and we don't fight for one specific struggle.