A Good Time for the Truth Quotes

“Tell me the truth of the matter. When I don't understand, I will not protest or judge or correct, I will simply listen harder. I am here to recognize you as my fellow human being with a story.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“A people on fire has no time to fan other people's flames.”
― Heid E. Erdrich, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“if little is expected from someone, everything is a win and a cause for celebration. We are wired this way, as human beings; when the goal is low, most of us fall to it rather than set our aim beyond.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Most white Minnesotans have forgotten that they were strangers here once. Or that they are not native to this land.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Niceness is not fairness.
Peace (or the absence of open conflict) is not justice.
Comfort is not guaranteed.
Until we dismantle this system, we will insist, in words and actions: Change is necessary.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“So what do you do if you are imprisoned for your race and ethnicity? The message is, Those are your crimes.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Because it is psychological. I see the boys in the park, the young boys, smoking and playing basketball when they should be in school. I couldn't understand why when I first arrived. Now, I am starting to see. It is because they have been told in school, in their community, on the street, that they are nothing, and so they have started to believe it. Once that happens, it is over. You can't be a man, a husband, a father. You can't do anything, once you start to believe that.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“If living in Minnesota has taught me one thing, it is that people will lash out at whoever tries to show what sits behind the appearance of things, especially if their own bias is the culprit.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Tell me the truth of the matter. When I don’t understand, I will not protest or judge or correct, I will simply listen harder. I am here to recognize you as my fellow human being with a story.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“The culture of Minnesota Nice has meant that the face of discrimination has almost always been much more subtle here. But the kind of subtlety that underlies Minnesota Nice—extreme and highly nuanced—only makes racism harder to fight.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“In the Land of Sky Blue Waters, they teach their young to listen, then coat the truth, so that it causes no harm.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“When I first moved to Minnesota, most folks didn’t say they were white. They proclaimed their heritage. Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, French. Strange, I thought. When did they become white? Maybe winter changes people into colors. I waited to see.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Passing meant people thought a person’s identity was just a coat, not a shackle, as if the passer had the key to run free from oppression.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“When a social media campaign #NativeLivesMatter launched, it was met with marked and at times unpleasant, even uninformed resistance from people associated with Black Lives Matter. That I also understand. A people on fire has no time to fan other people’s flames.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“I longed for the Confederate flags of the South, because at least the South had clear lines of demarcation and warning. In Minnesota, there were only smiling faces, open classroom doors, and a stinging persistent coldness that let me know that I was in a new, different place that wasn’t really welcoming—and that this place was resistant to me calling it home.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Sight is about contrast. You cannot see an object if there is nothing to contrast it against.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Black exists only because America is White.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Life is wealth and relationships are wealth. Domination, subjugation, exploitation, and the luxury of looking away is a poverty of the soul.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Before moving to America, I did not see the world through a "Black" lens...We had doctors, teachers, wealthy men. Indeed, we had successful men of all stripes. We did not have Black doctors, Black businessmen, or any so-called role models. We had people doing things we children knew we could just as easily do when we grew up.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota

“Before America, I was not Black. I was not adrift in a sea of White that I constantly had to come to terms with, against which my very humanity is measured--by Whites, Blacks, the world, and even myself. Black exists only because America is White.”
― Sun Yung Shin, A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota