Politics & Power Quote by June Jordan

June Jordan frames politics as a contact sport without glamouring violence, and that tension is the engine of the line. “Fighting is probably not fair” lands like a moral concession: she’s not pretending the world can be purified through righteous combat, or that power ever offers a level playing field. The next clause snaps shut the door on innocence. “But you have to defend yourself anyway” is the pivot from ethics-as-ideal to ethics-as-survival. Jordan isn’t celebrating aggression; she’s naming the predicament of marginalized people for whom “staying civil” often functions as a demand to stay absorbent.

The phrase “damage the enemy” is deliberately unsanitized. It refuses the soothing language of “engagement” or “dialogue” when the stakes are bodily and structural. Subtext: activism isn’t a seminar; it’s a response to harm already in motion. By choosing the word “enemy,” Jordan also signals clarity about antagonism. Not every conflict is a misunderstanding; some are organized, persistent, and backed by institutions. That bluntness reads as both strategy and warning: if you misname the threat, you misjudge what self-defense requires.

Context matters: Jordan’s work sits inside Black feminist thought, antiwar critique, and queer liberation, shaped by decades when reform was routinely met with backlash dressed up as “order.” She’s describing how a sober, almost reluctant acceptance of unfair struggle can produce a durable activism: one that keeps its moral compass, but doesn’t confuse morality with safety. The line works because it refuses two comforting lies at once: that politics can be fair, and that refusing to fight keeps you clean.