Many unhoused people work full time but earn starvation, unlivable wages. Some struggle to access mental health services or substance use treatment, making earning a consistent and stable wage nearly impossible.
Cori BushRead
This stereotype that Black and brown boys and girls are dangerous or threatening has normalized systems of trauma: the cradle to prison pipeline, foster care, youth detention, and being tried and sentenced as adults. We treat trauma with more trauma.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the harmful stereotypes about Black and brown children that lead to systemic issues and trauma.
Cori Bush's quote addresses the damaging stereotypes that label Black and brown boys and girls as dangerous, which contribute to a cycle of trauma within society. These stereotypes create a 'cradle to prison pipeline' where marginalized youth face systemic discrimination, leading them to experience foster care, youth detention, and being treated as adults within the judicial system. Instead of addressing the underlying trauma, society often responds with additional trauma, perpetuating a harmful cycle that affects not only individuals but entire communities.
Themes
StereotypesTraumaJusticeInequalityBlack Lives Matter
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing systemic racism and its impact on youth, this quote can illustrate the struggles faced by marginalized communities.
More from Cori Bush
All quotes →The death penalty is an inhumane punishment that disproportionately violates the human rights of Black, brown, indigenous, and other marginalized people.
Cori BushRead
By expanding the legal authority of law enforcement agencies - without addressing the infiltration of white supremacy within law enforcement - we are expanding the capacity of white supremacy itself.
Cori BushRead
We don't live in a world that nurtures and cares for Black girls like me. And if the world doesn't care about a Black girl like me, then what will happen to our Black babies who grow up to become Black children and Black adults?
Cori BushRead
Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure.
Cori BushRead
We treat Black and brown kids who can't vote yet, can't join the military, can't rent a car or even buy a lottery ticket - like adults in our criminal legal system. We deprive them of their joy and their youth. Children who deserve to live rich and abundant lives.
Cori BushRead
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Public housing officials are free to discriminate against you on the basis of criminal records, including arrest records. And so, you know, what you find is that even for these extremely minor offenses, people find themselves trapped in a permanent second-class status and struggling to survive.
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The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.
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