If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the 13th Amendment focuses solely on the legal aspects of slavery rather than societal narratives or ideologies surrounding race.
Bryan Stevenson highlights that the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, does not address the underlying racial ideologies or social narratives that contribute to systemic racism. Instead, it strictly defines the issue of involuntary servitude and forced labor, suggesting that legal frameworks alone do not address the broader societal context of racial differences and injustices.
In practice
This quote could be used during discussions on racial justice and legal reforms.
That's my mission: I really want to get in the heads and hearts of kids and persuade them that they can believe things they haven't seen, they can do things that maybe others haven't done before them, that they are more than their worst acts.
We all have a responsibility to create a just society
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.
Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.
I grew up in a segregated community: I couldn't go to the public schools, beaches, certain parts of town.
If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred—other men. Man hates nothing as much as himself. That is why war is called the leprosy of the human soul.
We cannot suppose therefore that God has made an order of beings, with such mental qualities and powers, for the sole purpose of being used as beasts, or instruments of labour.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.