Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Shirley Chisholm: Service Is the Rent That You Pay For Room On This Earth


You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

"Liberty and justice for all" were beautiful words, but the ugly fact was that liberty and justice were only for white males. 

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal. 

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: "It's a girl."

It is true that women have seldom been aggressive in demanding their rights and so have cooperated in their own enslavement. This was true of the black population for many years. They submitted to oppression, and even condoned it. But women are becoming aware, as blacks did, that they can have equal treatment if they will fight for it, and they are starting to organize. To do it, they have to dare the sanctions that society imposes on anyone who breaks with its traditions. This is hard, and especially hard for women, who are taught not to rebel from infancy, from the time they are first wrapped in pink blankets, the color of their caste.
 
In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.

We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us but also those that we have of ourselves.

The most tragic error into which older people can fall is one that is common among educators and politicians. It is to use youth as scapegoats for the sins of their elders. 
 
Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.  

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their prestige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs?

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more.

It is not female egotism to say that the future of mankind may very well be ours to determine. It is a fact. The warmth, gentleness, and compassion that are part of the female stereotype are positive human values, values that are becoming more and more important as the values of our world begin to                     shatter and fall from our grasp.

Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes…We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action affirming it, and more. But we must also remember that we will be breaking with tradition, and so we must prepare ourselves educationally, economically, and psychologically in order that we will be able to accept and bear with the sanctions that society will immediately impose upon us. 

Lincoln didn’t just end slavery. King didn’t just dream segregation away. Parks didn’t just get tired one day. It is often the unrecognized actions of previous generations that push a society to eventually embrace mantras such as hope, equality, change, and other ideals, which transform the political landscape. Chisholm's actions remind us that there are hundreds of forgotten foot soldiers in history that helped to bring these watershed moments to fruition.  

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. 

Shirley Chisholm

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