There are certain things that are obviously problems and should be topics of conversation that aren't.
…it has fallen to you to do a dirty job which your predecessors ought to have done before you.
It's like our relationship is always about the other side that isn't the obvious side.
My whole life, people have been saying, Why are you so angry?
Racism is a disease. Go to your doctor with an ailment, and let the doctor tell you, 'Well, look, I'm not going to treat you; we're just not going to talk about it. It's going to go away.' You would look at him like he's crazy. By not talking about racism, it's not going to go away.
... the fires of neglect.
Referring to the Los Angeles riot of 1992
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
Our silence is deafening and deadly.
Mum had pumped me so full of anger, I couldn't throw it off.
And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.
Most government officials are rushing headlong to solve the problems of 50 years ago, with their ears assailed by the sound of snails whizzing by.
My fight isn't with Charlie Hales. My fight is with the problems he has failed to address as mayor.
There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.
We in the Hispanic community are truly tired of both the Democrats and the Republicans promising all of these things during the campaigns and then forgetting about it after the campaigns are over.
I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized.
We've heard this before; 'things are bad, we are gonna fix them,' and they remain unfixed.
If you don't think about or deal with an issue, it gets bigger.
We need to confront our real problems, not indulge in false solutions that make them worse.
Race in this country is still the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss.
It’s less the words they say than those they leave unsaid that split old friends apart.
What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
But just because you bury something, that doesn't mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they'd been there all along. All that time. I had to face it.
There’s something really rich and powerful in not talking about what you need to talk about sometimes.
There were many things they simply didn't talk about: between them, silence was not so much a form of evasion as a way for solitary people to exist in a family.
What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds will fester from generation to generation.