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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure.
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.
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Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.
My father was at the forefront of the economic justice movement - fighting for and with Black women who were on welfare for dignity and for enough support to feed their families, shelter their kids.
Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.
The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison.
What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.
We're willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can't have a job, and you can't have housing, and because you don't have either, we're going to take your kids, too.