Black Cop's Kid Quotes

“Every step of the way throughout my life as an athlete and activist, I felt my father’s large hand on my shoulder guiding me down a path of service and justice. When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him. -Bayard Rustin”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“The problem is we're used to lumping groups together as a monolithic block. (...) This is inaccurate and, worse, an obstacle to improving our society”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“Being Black and seeing how we were viewed in society was like being raised by an abusive parent screaming at us daily that we are worthless.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“If you keep children from having any role models that look like them, you're suppressing their self-esteem and stifling their ambition.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“If you keep children from having any role models that look like them, you’re suppressing their self-esteem and stifling their ambition.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him. -Bayard Rustin”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“To me, defending the police is more a defense of the ideals of the police and what they should strive to be rather than the reality of what they so often are.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“I didn’t realize at the time that startling whites out of their biases was the entire mission of the Civil Rights Movement and would become the driving force in my own life.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“If a Black person does something amazing in a forest and no one talks about it, did it happen?”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“one bad apple spoils the bunch,”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“some white people were contemptuous of seeing a Black man in authority and weren’t shy about expressing their distaste with vile epithets,”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“Popular culture is the vital sign of the spiritual health of a society. How it portrays marginalized people, how it contradicts its own professed values, how it celebrates certain behavior over others, how it imagines fantastic ideas and worlds that never existed—and then strives to bring them into existence. It’s a cauldron of the boiling unconscious that then tries to sieve out the unacceptable.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. —Desmond Tutu2”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“political backlash has resulted in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country passing laws to make voting more difficult for minority voters. Punishment for raising your voice is to silence that voice.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“Racist police, no matter what their rank, have to be weeded from every department and not allowed to work in law enforcement again anywhere.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“I’m an unwavering supporter of labor unions and understand that they are currently in a death struggle with corporate overlords grinding workers’ rights under their tasseled Gucci loafers.”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay

“neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen”
― Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Black Cop's Kid: An Essay