So, for years I've had quotes up in my classroom for decoration. Some are political and some aren't. This year, I need a new one, because I learned Hannah Arendt was a huge racist.

The ideal quote should be implicitly leftist, but not explicitly.

For example I currently have: "Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs

" Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

So the sort of thing a liberal would glance at and think yeah that sounds good, but is actually based. No Mao or Lenin or anyone like that that will set off the brainworms. Thoughts?

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Decent overview here: https://medium.com/@rebecca.s.buxton/why-im-angry-with-hannah-arendt-68bae04628

    It's pretty fucking yikes

    This led me to reread The Origins of Totalitarianism. Here Arendt wrote that “race was the [South African] Boers’ answer to the overwhelming monstrosity of Africa — a whole continent populated and overpopulated by savages.” She also repeatedly refers to Africa as ‘the dark continent’ and describes its inhabitants as ‘barbarians’. For Arendt, it was obvious that the people of African “[they] had never found by themselves any adequate expression of human reason or human passion in either cultural deeds or popular customs, and which had developed human institutions only to a very low level.”