"We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it"
About this Quote
Urgency is doing double duty here: it’s a moral alarm bell and a rebuke to the comforting fantasy that “someone” will handle it. Dorothy Height frames “save our children” in the plainest possible language, but the subtext is scalpel-sharp. “Work” signals that the threat isn’t abstract; it’s structural, baked into schools, housing, policing, health care, and the labor market. Salvation, in Height’s worldview, is not charity or sentiment. It’s organized pressure, policy change, and community infrastructure built with intention.
The pivot is the clause “with full respect for the fact,” which sounds polite but functions like a warning label. Respect, here, doesn’t mean deference; it means realism. She’s naming a recurring American habit: outsourcing responsibility upward (to government), outward (to philanthropists), or downward (to “the community” as an amorphous idea), then acting surprised when the neglect persists. Height collapses that escape route: “if we do not, no one else is going to do it.” Not “may not.” “Is going to” - a grim certainty forged by experience.
Context matters: Height spent decades translating civil rights ideals into the unglamorous mechanics of coalition-building, especially centering Black women’s leadership and the everyday vulnerabilities of families. The “our” is inclusive but not naive; it’s a claim of ownership in a country that routinely disowns certain children through disinvestment and stigma. The line works because it refuses both despair and complacency. It demands agency without offering the comfort of an external rescuer.
The pivot is the clause “with full respect for the fact,” which sounds polite but functions like a warning label. Respect, here, doesn’t mean deference; it means realism. She’s naming a recurring American habit: outsourcing responsibility upward (to government), outward (to philanthropists), or downward (to “the community” as an amorphous idea), then acting surprised when the neglect persists. Height collapses that escape route: “if we do not, no one else is going to do it.” Not “may not.” “Is going to” - a grim certainty forged by experience.
Context matters: Height spent decades translating civil rights ideals into the unglamorous mechanics of coalition-building, especially centering Black women’s leadership and the everyday vulnerabilities of families. The “our” is inclusive but not naive; it’s a claim of ownership in a country that routinely disowns certain children through disinvestment and stigma. The line works because it refuses both despair and complacency. It demands agency without offering the comfort of an external rescuer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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