Endquotes
“I am not against this flag. This flag is my flag like it is yours. My people died to build this country, just like most of your parents did. I am part of a system that needs help. It needs an injection of love against hate. So we brought that forward.” Athlete, activist, and former Oberlin coach Tommie Smith, explaining his military-style stance during his protest at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, at the webinar “The Fist is Still Raised: A Conversation with Dr. Tommie Smith,” presented by the Heisman Club and the Presidential Initiative on Racial Equity and Diversity, November 17, 2020
“They were terrible books. The worst books anyone ever wrote. What terrible trashy books. There were four of them.” Novelist Alan Furst ’62 on the books he wrote before he turned to the historical spy genre that made him a wildly successful bestselling author, on the September 30, 2020, podcast Who’s Here in the Hamptons
“Racism, as an institution, is interwoven into the fabric of American culture, even when people don’t realize that they are reenacting institutional inequality; it has become so normalized in policy and practice that it is difficult to avoid even with legislative advances, even with changes to policy; we breathe in the air of social injustice and inequality.” Meredith Gadsby, Oberlin associate professor of Africana studies and comparative American studies, in the essay “Here’s Why Juneteenth Matters,” published June 19, 2020, on the website of Essence magazine
“One key lesson from Latin America is that democracy rarely breaks down suddenly. Countries slide gradually into authoritarianism as leaders curtail civil rights, demonize opposition groups, and muzzle the press.” Kristina Mani, Oberlin associate professor of politics and chair of Latin American studies, in The Conversation , a nonprofit news outlet written by academics and edited by journalists for the general public, June 8, 2020
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“If you came to my show and fell asleep, that’s great. If that’s what happens, that’s flattering.” Ami Dang ’06, a producer and sitarist who studied electronic composition at the conservatory, in an October 26, 2020, New York Times article on a new wave of new age music
“At Oberlin College in the U.S., poet and translator [now emeritus professor of English and creative writing] David Young taught me to think about the sound and shape of language beyond its content, which in turn made me think of its origin—not only in thought, but also in culture, place, and time.” Roland Kelts ’90, a contributing editor to the English-language Japanese literary magazine Monkey, in the October 22, 2020, issue of the magazine NikkeiAsia