"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength"
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Angelou’s line lands like a gentle instruction and a reprimand at once: if young people don’t learn to see diversity as “beauty” and “strength,” it’s because the adults around them failed to teach it. The phrase “It is time” carries moral impatience. She isn’t proposing a nice idea for someday; she’s naming a social debt that’s overdue, and placing responsibility squarely on parents before it ever reaches schools, politicians, or slogans.
The pairing of “beauty” and “strength” is doing deliberate double-duty. “Beauty” appeals to the senses and the heart, pushing back against the ugly narratives that portray difference as threat, disorder, or deficiency. “Strength” addresses the pragmatic anxieties that often masquerade as “realism”: the fear that pluralism weakens a community. Angelou refuses that framing. Diversity isn’t merely tolerable; it is an asset with visible and structural value, something that makes societies more resilient, more inventive, more fully human.
The subtext is shaped by Angelou’s lived era: the long aftermath of Jim Crow, the disappointments and triumphs of the civil rights movement, the daily grind of being told which bodies belong and which don’t. When she says “teach young people early on,” she’s talking about prejudice as a learned behavior, a habit installed before kids have the language to question it. The remedy isn’t abstract unity; it’s intentional storytelling at home, a counter-education that makes room for difference before fear gets there first.
The pairing of “beauty” and “strength” is doing deliberate double-duty. “Beauty” appeals to the senses and the heart, pushing back against the ugly narratives that portray difference as threat, disorder, or deficiency. “Strength” addresses the pragmatic anxieties that often masquerade as “realism”: the fear that pluralism weakens a community. Angelou refuses that framing. Diversity isn’t merely tolerable; it is an asset with visible and structural value, something that makes societies more resilient, more inventive, more fully human.
The subtext is shaped by Angelou’s lived era: the long aftermath of Jim Crow, the disappointments and triumphs of the civil rights movement, the daily grind of being told which bodies belong and which don’t. When she says “teach young people early on,” she’s talking about prejudice as a learned behavior, a habit installed before kids have the language to question it. The remedy isn’t abstract unity; it’s intentional storytelling at home, a counter-education that makes room for difference before fear gets there first.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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