The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the persistent belief in the devaluation of certain groups of people, particularly in the context of societal prejudice.
Jesmyn Ward's quote expresses a profound critique of systemic racism and inequality that continues to pervade society. By referring to the 'ugly heart of the South,' she alludes to the historical and ongoing struggles against racial discrimination, suggesting that there is a deeply ingrained belief that some individuals are inherently less valuable than others based on their identity. This statement serves as a call to awareness and action against these harmful ideologies.
In practice
During a discussion on racial equity, you might quote this to emphasize the ongoing struggle against systemic racism.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
I think people make certain assumptions about what they're interested in reading or what others would be interested in reading, and when they think of poor black people in the South, they don't think people are interested in reading about those people.
The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with that-which-is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place.
The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live.
one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.
She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.
Thall shall keep thy religion to thy selves.
Though, when a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.
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