Daily Inspiration Quote by Constance Baker Motley

“The fact is” is doing courtroom work here: Constance Baker Motley isn’t offering a vibe, she’s laying down a record. As a civil rights lawyer and later the first Black woman federal judge, Motley lived in the machinery of American racism - not as metaphor, but as policy, procedure, and precedent. So when she says racism “has diminished,” it’s not the rosy denial of someone eager to declare victory. It’s a strategic claim about measurable change: laws overturned, doors pried open, institutions forced (sometimes grudgingly) to comply.

The target is embedded in the phrase “despite all the doomsayers.” Motley is pushing back against a politics of despair that can harden into paralysis. The subtext: if you insist nothing changes, you erase the hard-won gains produced by organizing, litigation, and risk. That erasure isn’t neutral; it disarms movements by making effort feel futile.

At the same time, “diminished” is calibrated. Not ended. Not cured. Diminished implies a stubborn residue - racism as a system that can be reduced, contained, made to retreat, but not magically dissolved. The line reflects a mid-to-late 20th-century tension: the civil rights era’s tangible victories colliding with the persistence of discrimination in housing, schools, policing, and employment. Motley's intent is both corrective and mobilizing: progress is real, panic is unhelpful, and the proper response to partial victory is not complacency but continued pressure with clear eyes.