At this moment of despair, helplessness, and anger I wanted to make my own small contribution, to right a wrong that is too often made. As a white person, I have been told that one of the things we can do is listen and allow BAME voices to be heard. So this quiz does exactly that. 20 quotes by BAME writers, 40 writers to discover and enjoy.
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Question of
‘Here was the true Great Spirit…if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.’
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Colson Whitehead
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Gloria Naylor
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Question of
‘Mae’s never understood why people – privileged people -insist that there’s something shameful in desiring money. No immigrant ever apologized for wanting a nicer life.’
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Joanne Ramos
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Sara Collins
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Question of
‘Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it’s not happening to you, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.’
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Trevor Noah
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Angie Thomas
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Question of
‘You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men.’
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Esi Edugyan
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Ralph Ellison
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Question of
‘The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie.’
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Ibi Zoboi
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Question of
‘It makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissolution, disappearance.’
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Zadie Smith
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Kazuo Ishiguro
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Question of
‘Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: “He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”’
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Chinua Achebe
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Malorie Blackman
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Question of
‘There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race — scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct…Money can be made off of it, people who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it.’
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Toni Morrison
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Audre Lorde
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Question of
‘Activism is my rent for living on the planet.’
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Alice Walker
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Roxane Gay
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Question of
‘Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.’
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Maya Angelou
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Imtiaz Dharker
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Question of
‘It’s not putting black lives on a pedestal…It’s saying that black lives, at this point, and historically, do not, and have not mattered, and that they should!’
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Candice Carty-Williams
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Oyinkan Braithwaite
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Question of
‘Why should he carry the burden of representation when it will only hold him back? white people are only required to represent themselves, not an entire race.’
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Bernardine Evaristo
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Kamila Shamsie
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Question of
‘We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing.’
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Jesmyn Ward
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Diana Evans
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Question of
‘I thought of Walter again. “Six or twelve,” he sometimes said when he was depressed… “That’s your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.”’
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Tayari Jones
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Langston Hughes
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Question of
‘Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.’
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Zora Neale Hurston
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Jackie Kay
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Question of
‘Some of us got this feeling stuck inside, all the time, like we’ve done something wrong. Like we ourselves are something wrong.’
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Tommy Orange
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Jamil Jan Kochai
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Question of
‘But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.’
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Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Louise Erdich
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Question of
‘A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn’t name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness.’
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Yaa Gyasi
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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
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Question of
‘Educated didn’t mean smart. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape.’
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Octavia Butler
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Etaf Rum
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Question of
‘To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.’
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James Baldwin
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Devi S Laskar
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