Rainbow Coalition Quotes

Holly had taken to calling us the rainbow coalition team, since we had one white female, and males of the Black, Asian, and Other categories. All we needed was a lesbian and a guy in a wheelchair and we were ready to salve even the biggest liberal's angst.

We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was an infinity of greens, rendered all the greener by splashes of red hibiscus and the herons floating past, so white and big it seemed as if sheets hung out to dry had suddenly taken wing. All other colours - even purple and black - were shades of green. Light and shade were degrees of green. Greenness, here, was less a colour than a colonising impulse. Everything was either already green - like a snake, bright as a blade of grass, sidling across the footpath - or in the process of becoming so. Statues of the Buddha were mossy, furred with green.

Which is why Slothrop now observes his coalition with hopes for success and hopes for disaster about equally high (and no, that doesn’t cancel out to apathy—it makes a loud dissonance that dovetails inside you sharp as knives). It does annoy him that he can be so divided, so perfectly unable to come down on one side or another. Those whom the old Puritan sermons denounced as “the glozing neuters of the world” have no easy road to haul down, Wear-the-Pantsers, just cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there! Energy inside is just as real, just as binding and inescapable, as energy that shows. When’s the last time you felt intensely lukewarm? eh? Glozing neuters are just as human as heroes and villains. In many ways they have the most grief to put up with, don’t they?

Maybe if you’d been able to restrain yourselves from endlessly screaming about the unique evil of white people, I wouldn’t have started to look into exactly who was doing most of the screaming. Since you apparently can’t help yourself from continually profiling me, don’t cry foul when I start profiling you. And I don’t think it qualifies as imagining there are Jews in your sandwich when anywhere from half to three-quarters of the hoagie you’re feeding me is stuffed with kosher meat. Palefaced XY-chromosome devils have been persistently framed in popular discourse as eternal oppressors and congenital spewers of venom, bile, and hatred. But despite everything the media has been peddling for generations, it appears that this oft-maligned demographic suffers from a fatal flaw, one that runs contrary to the stereotype—they’re way too nice. They’re not homicidally intolerant so much as they’re suicidally tolerant. And unless their antagonists—whether they’re self-loathing crackers such as Michael Moore or anyone else in the increasingly hostile and jeering Rainbow Coalition—learn to cool it with the screaming, it appears that the only option is to start screaming back. Otherwise it seems evident that the tireless bashers of everything white and male don’t view white males as a powerful oppressor so much as an easy target.

Say more about the Crips and the Bloods,” Richard said, stalling for time while he tried to get his mental house in order. “To us they look the same. Urban black kids with similar demographics and tastes. Seems like they all ought to pull together. But that’s not where they’re at. They are shooting each other to death because they see the Other as less than human. And I’m saying it has been the case for a long time in T’Rain that those people we have lately started calling the Earthtone Coalition have always looked at the ones we now call the Forces of Brightness and seen them as tacky, uncultured, not really playing the game in character. And what happened in the last few months was that the F.O.B. types just got tired of it and rose up and, you know, asserted their pride in their identity, kind of like the gay rights movement with those goddamned rainbow flags. And as long as it’s possible for those two groups to identify each other on sight, each one of them is going to see the other as, well, the Other, and killing people based on that is way more ingrained than killing them on this completely bogus and flimsy fake-Good and fake-Evil dichotomy that we were working with before.” “I get it,” Richard said. “But is that all we are? Just digital Crips and Bloods?” “What if it’s true?” Devin shrugged. “Then you’re not doing your fucking job,” Richard said. “Because the world is supposed to have a real story to it. Not just people killing each other over color schemes.” “Maybe you’re not doing yours,” Devin said. “How can I write a story about Good and Evil in a world where those concepts have no real meaning—no consequences?” “What sort of consequences do you have in mind? We can’t send people’s characters to virtual Hell.” “I know. Only Limbo.” They both laughed.

The Prime Minister, who was in close contact with the Queen and Prince Charles, captured the feelings of loss and despair when he spoke to the nation earlier in the day from his Sedgefield constituency. Speaking without notes, his voice breaking with emotion, he described Diana as a ‘wonderful and warm human being.’ ‘She touched the lives of so many others in Britain and throughout the world with joy and with comfort. How difficult things were for her from time to time, I’m sure we can only guess at. But people everywhere, not just here in Britain, kept faith with Princess Diana. They liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the People’s Princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in all our hearts and memories for ever.’ While his was the first of many tributes which poured in from world figures, it perfectly captured the mood of the nation in a historic week which saw the British people, with sober intensity and angry dignity, place on trial the ancient regime, notably an elitist, exploitative and male-dominated mass media and an unresponsive monarchy. For a week Britain succumbed to flower power, the scent and sight of millions of bouquets a mute and telling testimony to the love people felt towards a woman who was scorned by the Establishment during her lifetime. So it was entirely appropriate when Buckingham Palace announced that her funeral would be ‘a unique service for a unique person’. The posies, the poems, the candles and the cards that were placed at Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and elsewhere spoke volumes about the mood of the nation and the state of modern Britain. ‘The royal family never respected you, but the people did,’ said one message, as thousands of people, most of whom had never met her, made their way in quiet homage to Kensington Palace to express their grief, their sorrow, their guilt and their regret. Total strangers hugged and comforted each other, others waited patiently to lay their tributes, some prayed silently. When darkness fell, the gardens were bathed in an ethereal glow from the thousands of candles, becoming a place of dignified pilgrimage that Chaucer would have recognized. All were welcome and all came, a rainbow of coalition of young and old of every colour and nationality, East Enders and West Enders, refugees, the disabled, the lonely, the curious, and inevitably, droves of tourists. She was the one person in the land who could connect with those Britons who had been pushed to the edges of society as well as with those who governed it.

«Δεν υπήρχε πια το χωνευτήρι, αυτή ήταν η τραγωδία. Υποτίθεται ότι θα τους δεχόμασταν όλους, θα τους καλωσορίζαμε με ανοιχτές αγκάλες, θα τους σφίγγγαμε πάνω μας, με τη στοργή που δείχνουμε στους δικούς μας ανθρώπους, θα σφυρηλατήσουμε από χιλιάδες φυλές, μια μοναδική δυνατή, παλλόμενη φυλή. Αυτή ήταν η αρχική ιδέα. Καθόλου κακή, εδώ που τα λέμε. Ένας λαός. Μια καλή, ευπρεπής, τολμηρή και έντιμη φυλή. Κάπου όμως στα μισά του δρόμου η ιδέα άρχισε να ξεφτάει. Είχε κρατήσει πιο πολύ από τις περισσότερες ιδέες στην Αμερική, όπου όλα τελούν υπό καθεστώς μονίμου μεταβολής. Στην Αμερική υπάρχει πάντα ένας καινούριος πρόεδρος ή ένας καινούριος πόλεμος ή ένα καινούριο σίριαλ ή ένα καινούριο τοκ-σόου ή ένας καινούριος καταπληκτικός συγγραφέας. Μπροστά στον συντριπτικό πλούτο ιδεών που κατακλύζουν συνεχώς την Αμερική, μέρα και νύχτα, νύχτα και μέρα, δεν ήταν τόσο αξιοπερίεργο που οι άνθρωποι άρχισαν να σκέφτονται ότι η ιδέα να συγχωνεύσουμε όλα αυτά τα διαφορετικά χρώματα, τις γλώσσες και τους πολιτισμούς, ίσως να μην ήταν τελικά και τόσο καταπληκτική. Πιθανότατα τότε άρχισε να σβήνει και η δυνατή ζεστή φλόγα που έκανε να βράζει το θεόρατο καζάνι -όπως θα μπορούσε να χαρακτηρίσει κανείς αυτή την πόλη-λιμάνι εισόδου- ώσπου χαμήλωσε τόσο ώστε δεν έφτανε για την τήξη. Η τρέχουσα καταπληκτική ιδέα ήταν να διατηρήσουμε ιερή και ξεχωριστή την κληρονομιά των μακρινών τόπων και των ξένων γλωσσών. Όχι να συνεισφέρουμε τους θησαυρούς αυτούς στη μοναδική φυλή, όχι να μοιραστούμε αυτόν τον πλούτο με τα άλλα μέλη αυτής της μεγάλης φυλής, αλλά να προστατέψουμε την κάθε ορδή από τις άλλες ορδές, να κρατήσουμε αυτή την περιουσία παντού και πάντα τεμαχισμένη. Ενώ το “χώρια αλλά ίσοι” ήταν κάποτε μια περιφρονημένη έννοια, τώρα την βλέπαμε σαν κάτι που θα μπορούσε να αποτελέσει κίνητρο για έναν ολόκληρο λαό. Χώρια, φίλε! Φτάνει όμως να είμαστε ίσοι. Ενώ κάποτε το ευγενές ιδανικό του “Συνασπισμού του Ουράνιου Τόξου”(Rainbow Coalition) πυροδοτούσε μιαν εικόνα με στρώματα διαφορετικών χρωμάτων να διασχίζουν μαζί τον ουρανό σε μια αδιάρρηκτη ενότητα που οδηγούσε στον κοινό θησαυρό, η απονευρωμένη έκφραση “τεράστιο μωσαϊκό” πυροδοτούσε τώρα ένα περιορισμένο όραμα με μικρές ψηφίδες χρωμάτων, χωρισμένων μεταξύ τους, με την κάθε μονάδα ασφαλή μέσα στη δική της λάμψη και ομορφιά, χωρίς καμιά να συνεισφέρει στην ευρύτερη σύλληψη ενός μοναδικού και αξιόλογου συνόλου. Ενώ κάποτε οι άνθρωποι χτυπούσαν την πόρτα της ευκαιρίας και φώναζαν “ξεχάστε ότι είμαστε μαύροι, ξεχάστε ότι είμαστε Λατίνοι, ξεχάστε ότι είμαστε Ασιάτες!”, οι ίδιοι άνθρωποι φώναζαν τώρα “μην ξεχνάτε ότι είμαστε μαύροι, μην ξεχνάτε ότι είμαστε Λατίνοι, μην ξεχνάτε ότι είμαστε Ασιάτες!” Ενώ κάποτε ένιωθες περηφάνια και τιμή και αξιοπρέπεια και ελπίδα που ήσουν Αμερικάνος, τώρα ένιωθες μόνο απόγνωση γι' αυτό που έγινε η Αμερική. Δεν ήταν λοιπόν καθόλου αξιοπερίεργο που οι μετανάστες θυμούνταν τα πάτρια εδάφη τους πιο ήσυχα και σταθερά απ' ό,τι είχαν υπάρξει ποτέ στην πραγματικότητα. Δεν ήταν καθόλου αξιοπερίεργο που προτιμούσαν να αγκιστρώνονται από μια εθνική ταυτότητα που την ένιωθαν αιωνίως ίδια και απαράλλαχτη, αντί να παρασύρονται από τις μαλακίες του ενός και αδιαίρετου έθνους, με ελευθερία και δικαιοσύνη για όλους.»

Finally, as was their way, as Daron had learned in Berzerkeley, a group of miscellaneous white people arrived to involve themselves in affairs none of their concern. This particular group was a brightly colored rainbow coalition (in dress only), complete with rainbow posters and matching rainbow shirts—So cute, said his mom—and the chanting of slogans such as, Equal Rights for All, Abolish Reenactments, and States’ Rights = Slaves, Right?

She wanted to check that it was not her imagination, that she was not being unfair or undemocratic, or worse still racist (but she had read Colour Blind, a seminal leaflet from the Rainbow Coalition, she had scored well on the self-test), racist in ways that were so deeply ingrained and socially determining that they escaped her attention.

one of the first acts of the Young Lords in Chicago was to join the Rainbow Coalition-uniting with our allies, our brothers and sisters, in the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets, the Young Patriots, and Rising Up Angry. The Young Lords understood the importance of collaboration and of building a broad people's movement in order to transform society.

I would argue that one of the most consistent challenges throughout the history of the American presidency is how often racial concerns captured the attention of the president. From the troubling history of the treatment and the wars against Native Americans to the pervasive shadow that was slavery to the calls to address racial violence whether it was the lynching epidemic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or the murder of Trayvon Martin to the calls for equality from a rainbow coalition of people of color, presidents from George Washington to Donald Trump have often found themselves mired in the politics of race.