—TO SURVIVE, YOU NEED A MEAL TICKET

 

  

“This whole submarine thing was kind of my breaking point, with moral scolds in every direction -- do you feel TOO BAD about the submarine? Do you NOT FEEL BAD ENOUGH? Are you being too mean? Not mean enough? It all feels just unbearably bad faith and built on air. Your opinion of dead submarine billionaires has no bearing on actual real-world politics or your ability to have actual human empathy in everyday life. Many lovely people I know personally cared a whole lot and many cared not a whit. Vice Versa, too. Your (and my!) emotional reaction to an artificially boosted event that affects a very minor sub-set of people isn't a good marker for your moral or political or ethical compass and it's weird to think it is, which is why I'm not judging anyone in any direction. I am glad the whole submarine thing is over because it was a projection magnet, and a particularly nasty one at that.” Letty Ann Trent

 

“It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said of the reaction to the disparity of the lost submersible and capsized boat carrying Myanmar refugees.  “The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others ... it’s a, you know, really dark reflection on humanity. Far more coverage was given to the submersible than about the migrant boat, yet, it’s 100 times as many people (plus 500) who are feared to have lost their lives than those five in the sub. These refugees were forced to flee their homes, they were simply looking for safety. They weren’t seeking an underwater museum tour.”

 

On one vessel, five people died on a very expensive excursion that was supposed to return them to the lives they knew. On the other, perhaps 500 people died just days earlier on a squalid and perilous voyage, fleeing poverty and violence in search of new lives.

Aboard the Titan were three wealthy businessmen — a white American, a white Briton and a Pakistani-British magnate — along with the billionaire’s 19-year-old son and a white French deep-sea explorer. Those on the fishing boat — as many as 750, officials have estimated, with barely 100 survivors — were migrants primarily from South Asia and the Middle East, trying to reach Europe.

“We saw how some lives are valued and some are not,” Judith Sunderland

 

 

“Life, I’ve learned, is never fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.” Nicholas Sparks

 

“If slavery had been abolished, I, too, could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws.” Harriet Ann Jacobs

 

“I couldn’t understand why he was home all day, when Mama had to go out working. I was ashamed of him for that and, in a deeper way, for being what had led to our imprisonment, that is, for being so unalterably Japanese.” Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

 

“At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.” Gore Vidal

 

“The worst thing about that kind of prejudice is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds your self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.” Nina Simone

 

“’It’s so unfair,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day. I’ll have to speak to Father about it.” John Boyle, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"

 

“The air is the only place free from prejudice.” Bessie Coleman

 

“There are days when the close attention I must give to details chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few chapters, while in the world other girls are laughing and singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but soon I recover my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart.” Helen Keller

 

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.” Hafiz