June Jordan: Blackness

June Jordan was Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist. Explore interesting quotes on blackness.
June Jordan: 26   quotes 1   like

“Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?”

June Jordan

Source: Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person (1969), p. 46

Life , Soul , Question , Freedom

“In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.”

June Jordan

Source: Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person (1969), p. 48

Courage , Suicide

“Education has paralleled the life of prospering white America: it has been characterized by reverence for efficiency, cultivation of competence unattended by concern for aim, big white lies, and the mainly successful blackout of Black life.”

June Jordan

Source: Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person (1969), p. 49

Education , Life , Success

“Efficiency, competence: Black students know the deadly, neutral definition of these words. There seldom has been a more efficient system for profiteering, through human debasement, than the plantations, of a while ago. Today, the whole world sits, as quietly scared as it can sit, afraid that, tomorrow, America may direct its efficiency and competence toward another forest for defoliation, or clean-cut laser-beam extermination.”

June Jordan

Source: Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person (1969), p. 47

World