Reading = Resistance

I've always loved to read, but over time I've grown to view reading as an act of resistance. Owning books is a privilege that must be identified as such because they are not accessible by everyone. The purpose of this blog is scattered, but one reason I made it is to bring the knowledge and power to the people. I want this space to a place where we can learn and grow together. The books I read have challenged me to think in ways I've never had to think before, and that alone is powerful. Although I may not agree with everything written in the books I read I will try to present the author's words to yall so yall may discover your own opinions. We will stand as a group, but we must also maintain our individuality. I still have to constantly remind myself of this, but hopefully this space can bring out the individuality in myself and all of you. So here's to learning together!

[nastynaf-blog]

@yosoynickelz

[yosoynickelz-deactivated2016011]

Thank you- upgraded my Christmas list

[nastynaf-blog]

It’s cool

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.

James Baldwin

[knowledgeequalsblackpower]

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The Wretched of the Earth

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Assata: An Autobiography

The New Jim Crow

Medical Apartheid

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

Lies My Teacher Told Me

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns

The New Jim Crow ~ Michelle Alexander 

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. That is not what one would guess, however, when entering our nations prisons and jails, which are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders

The New Jim Crow ~ Michelle Alexander

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color 'criminals' and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind

The New Jim Crow ~ Michelle Alexander 

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Got some new books today

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

...people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth--- and indeed, no church---can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakeable

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word 'love' here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace--- not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself--- that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time 

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

Now, there is simply no possibility of a real change in the Negro's situation without the most radical and far-reaching changes in the American political and social structure

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

To accept one's past--- one's history--- is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

It is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time

[weresistthrubooks-blog]

All doormen, for example, and all policemen have by now, for me, become exactly the same, and my style with them is designed simply to intimidate them before they can intimidate me. No doubt I am guilty of some injustice here, but it is irreducible, since I cannot risk assuming that the humanity of these people is more real to them than their uniforms. Most Negroes cannot risk assuming that the humanity of white people is more real to them than their color

James Baldwin ~ The Fire Next Time