Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.
Alveda KingRead
Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the connection between abortion and racism as manifestations of selfishness.
Alveda King asserts that both abortion and racism arise from a fundamental human flaw: the belief that it is acceptable to remove obstacles to our desires, including other people. She suggests that these issues share a common root in selfishness, indicating a need for self-reflection and empathy in human behaviors and societal choices.
Themes
AbortionRacismSelfishnessHuman ErrorEmpathy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a debate about morality and ethics in society.
More from Alveda King
All quotes →Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated.
Alveda KingRead
Similar quotes
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar WildeRead
The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings—that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think about many things mechanically, but you will get nothing from it.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.
Thomas JeffersonRead
To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone 'oppressed' to beat them: every revolutionist is presumed to understand that, and also every woman, which either does or does not make 51 percent of the population of the United States a potentially revolutionary class.
Joan DidionRead
Blameless people are always the most exasperating.
George EliotRead