Justice should be blind especially color-blind and able to fairly deal with the very real need for honest law enforcement.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
Sports and entertainment are the only places where inner-city kids see themselves being able to succeed. Their intellectual development is something they don't relate to.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how sports and entertainment provide representation and hope for success to inner-city youth who may not see other pathways to achievement.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's quote emphasizes that for many inner-city children, the only environments where they can envision themselves achieving success are in sports and entertainment. This indicates a lack of representation and relatability in traditional forms of intellectual development, such as academics. As a result, these children may undervalue education and intellectual pursuits, instead looking towards athletics or fame as their primary pathways to success.
Themes
SuccessRepresentationEducationSportsInner-CityYouth
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing educational inequality, this quote can illustrate the importance of representation in various fields.
More from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
All quotes βI've had enough success for two lifetimes, My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarRead
Similar quotes
Education isn't something you can finish
Isaac AsimovRead
How do you explain to somebody who doesn't understand that you don't build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to, for reference, as and when. But also something you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are or, more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own.
Howard JacobsonRead
So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary.
Albert HadleyRead
There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.
Maryanne WolfRead
History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.
Simon SchamaRead
Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids.
Neil GaimanRead