31 Angela Davis Quotes On Race, Feminism & More
“Angela Davis” by “Columbia GSAPP“, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Angela Yvonne Davis is a well-known author, academic, and political activist in the United States.
On January 26, 1944, Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in ‘Dynamite Hill,’ a very racially charged neighborhood. She attended segregated schools through high school and was highly active in civil rights protests when she was a child.
She is well known for advocating for various social causes, including women’s rights, jail reform, and the repeal of racist and sexist regulations.
She made her mark as a counter-culture and radical activist in the 1960s when she became the Communist Party USA leader. Her ties with the Black Panther Party were strong because of her involvement in the civil rights movement. She was also a professor at the University of California and the director of the ‘Feminist Studies Department’ at the same university.
This collection of Angela Davis quotes will undoubtedly refresh your memory on gender equality.
Angela Davis Quotes on Race
Angela Davis has also written novels about racism, class, and gender. Davis co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization dedicated to ending the prison–industrial complex, as part of her fight for prisoner rights. Here is a collection of Angela Davis quotes on race that will inspire you to stand up for what you believe in.
“In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“If we do not know how to meaningfully talk about racism, our actions will move in misleading directions.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“I feel that if we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it’s perhaps far more terrible than it’s ever been.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“The struggle against racism must be an ongoing theme of the anti-rape movement, which must not only defend women of color, but the many victims of the racist manipulation of the rape charge as well.”
ANGELA DAVIS
Angela Davis Quotes Feminism
Angela Davis has spent much of her adult life travelling and teaching about racial discrimination, the criminal justice system, and women’s rights. She was a passionate supporter of the feminist movement and had a strong advocate for intersectionality. Here is a collection of Angela Davis quotes on feminism.
“To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“We must begin to create a revolutionary, multiracial women’s movement that seriously addresses the main issues affecting poor and working-class women.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Many of us then thought that what we needed to do was to expand the category ‘women’ so that it could embrace Black women, Latina women, Native American women, and so forth.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Feminism insists on methods of thought and action that urge us to think about things together that appear to be separate, and to disaggregate things that appear to naturally belong together.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Feminism involves so much more than gender equality. And it involves so much more than gender.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“It (Feminism) has to involve a consciousness of capitalism and racism and colonialism and post colonialities and ability and more genders than we can even imagine, and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“No march, movement, or agenda that defines manhood in the narrowest terms and seeks to make women lesser partners in this quest for equality can be considered a positive step.”
ANGELA DAVIS
SOURCE: CNN
Angela Davis Communism Quotes
Her topics of speech and interest are critical theory, feminism, social consciousness, communism, and the history and philosophy of prisons and punishments. Read through these Angela Davis communism quotes and sayings.
“I am opposed to Solidarity because I believe that it is an anti-socialist organisation which desires the overthrow of a socialist state.“
ANGELA DAVIS
“Anyway I don’t think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“When Obama was elected president, a prisoner said “one black man in the White House doesn’t make up for one million black men in the Big House.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers.”
ANGELA DAVIS
More Angela Davis Quotes
Angela Davis is well-known for her efforts to end tyranny in the United States and worldwide. Her life has been devoted to advancing women’s and racial equality. Here are some more Angela Davis quotes to get inspiration from.
“Human beings cannot be willed and molded into non-existence.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.”
ANGELA DAVIS
“I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both.”
ANGELA DAVIS
Davis has won numerous honors, including the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. She was named in Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most important people in 2020.
Davis’s work has affected and motivated many individuals to talk about topics that are happening but aren’t being talked about. Hopefully, these Angela Davis quotes above will encourage you to take steps in the right direction.
You can also check out 35 Powerful Cesar Chavez Quotes On Education, Civil Rights & More.
Curated by: Divya Singh
