Therapists are less likely to perceive a black woman as sad; instead they see her as angry or anxious.
Melissa Harris-PerryRead
Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Social acceptance can be fragile when it relies on personal behaviors rather than inherent worth.
This quote highlights the precarious nature of social standing when it is tied to behaviors or traits that can change over time. It suggests that true value comes from unconditional human worth, advocating for an understanding of individuals beyond their social performance or acceptance, thereby emphasizing the importance of recognizing intrinsic value in everyone regardless of their social behaviors.
Themes
Social AcceptanceHuman ValueBehavioral TraitsSocial StandingWorth
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a discussion on social dynamics at a community event.
More from Melissa Harris-Perry
All quotes βSimilar quotes
Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.
Jeanette WintersonRead
In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin.
Pico IyerRead
We're all trapped. It's always 1734. All of us, we're stuck in the same time capsule, the same as those television shows where the same people are marooned on the same desert island for thirty seasons and never age or escape. They just wear more makeup. In a creepy way, those shows are maybe too authentic.
Chuck PalahniukRead
If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.
R. Buckminster FullerRead
The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.
Frantz FanonRead
God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.
Gian-Carlo RotaRead