Activity

[...] I cannot honestly say I feel proud to be white and ashamed to be black or proud to be black and ashamed to be white. I find it impossible to experience either pride of shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I understand how those words got into the racial discourse, b…

Englishman: [...] Maybe we could just give them a few things ... a nice bed, bedsheets, something so they won't be bitten to death at night. [...]

Liberian: My friend, someone's going to get malaria. It's inevitable. [...] I ask you please not to worry about malaria--we get it all the …

"[...] The whole reason Firestone came to Liberia in the first place was as a means of creating a permanent supply of rubber for the American military. The British had increased the taxes on Malaysian rubber--the Americans didn't want to pay that. They needed a permanent solution. So they planted t…

It is a frustration for activists that Liberians have tended not to trace their trouble back to extractive foreign companies or their government lobbies. Liberians don't think that way. Most Liberians know how much a rubber tapper gets paid: thirty-five American dollars a month. [...]

[...] The girls sing without facial affect; dead-eyed, unsmiling. Around us the bored schoolboys skulk. Nobody speaks to them or takes their picture. The teacher does not worry that boredom and disaffection may turn to resentment and violence: "Oh, no, they are very happy for the girls."