JC

“Black power is Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, or Gabriel Prosser planning a slave revolt. It is slaves poisoning masters, and Frederick Douglass delivering an abolitionist address. This is the history that black theology must take seriously before it can begin to speak about God and black humanity. Like black power, black theology is not new either. It came into being when the black clergy realized that killing slave masters was doing the work of God. It began when the black clergy refused to accept the racist white church as consistent with the gospel of God. The organizing of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Methodist Church, the Baptist churches, and many other black churches is a visible manifestation of black theology. The participation of black churches in the black liberation struggle from the eighteenth to the twentieth century is a tribute to the endurance of black theology.”
― James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation

“Even if Kafka did not pray—and this we do not know—he still possessed in the highest degree what Malebranche called "the natural prayer of the soul": attentiveness. And in this attentiveness he included all living creatures, as saints include them in their prayers.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“The latecomer, male, had a guitar and reddish hair. He was short and hippie-like. She relaxed; she'd met his type. He reminded her of many years ago, "white liberals... when the shit starts to fly, they'll leave you in the street." She took this note of him with derision and ease.
He said that he was going to Kingston; that he used to write and sing and that he was now working as merchant marine like his father. He was writing a book. She was glad that he had sat beside her. They talked about the old days, the Soviet Union and the United States. He said that the superpowers were going to blast us all to hell. Maoist, she thought. She said that the Soviet Union never did anything to Black people. He said that he was a bit of a pacifist now. They talked until Kingston, a jarring kind of talk.
"And besides who supported us in Africa? The United States never gave us any weapons. It's them that we're fighting."
And he, "I abhor violence of any kind. I don't care which side you're on."
"God!"
"I just don't know about that sort of action," not noticing her response.
She exhaled wearily. Jesus, why was she talking to him about Africa!
"In Germany, where was the history for it?" he looked to the ceiling of the train earnestly, then at her.
"I don't know; I wasn't there. Germany, now or then, is not a place that I understand." she replied, looking at him as if to ask, Do you?
"Well, what did it accomplish?" he, continuing, "It seems useless and wasteful to me, at any rate - kidnappings, bombings."
She was regretting talking to him. He was so comfortable with himself. And after all, she thought, what had he done — probably worn flowers in his hair and played his guitar. That was easy enough. He probably loved his father; this odd musing crossed her mind. She hated him already. She realized that she had hated him, even before he came onto the train. At the corner of her eye, she noticed his face, like a child's with its conceit, its petulance.”
― Dionne Brand, Sans Souci: And Other Stories

“To my mind, these futuristic works are a continuation of the racial imaginary of late seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works of literature by writers like Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, William Thackery, Jane Austen and Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë. Those earlier works and their subjects foregrounded individualism, middle-class making, religiosity and industry—which were, no doubt, their concerns but were also the patina over the colonization/education/eradication/exploitation of the “savages.” Giving these works the imprimatur of great literature indemnified the violence of the bourgeoisie. It couched the extreme violence of chattel slavery, colonization and genocide in what was purportedly benign, in the affects of good manners, proper decorum, high graces, great balls, great passions, great ambition; and it granted licence to ignore those events (in the name of good taste). But in these works you might find, if you read well and closely, the “great historical moments” against which these seemingly domestic dramas took place, and the studied innocence of the deep violence that eradicated populations of Indigenous peoples, that murdered and enslaved millions, that immiserated continents and made fortunes.”
― Dionne Brand, Salvage: Readings from the Wreck