Education Quote by Eldridge Cleaver

Cleaver’s line is a jailbreak from the polite liberal fantasy that oppression is mostly a misunderstanding. By flipping the usual self-help premise - “we need more empathy” - he argues that empathy is already there, buried under training. The real project isn’t manufacturing humanity; it’s dismantling the habits and incentives that make people choose cruelty while still feeling respectable.

The intent is accusatory in a precise way. “Teach” doesn’t mean a classroom lecture; it means a society’s conditioning: police academies, courtroom scripts, newsroom frames, school tracking, the quiet choreography of who gets presumed dangerous and who gets presumed innocent. Cleaver insists inhumanity is learned, rehearsed, rewarded. That’s why the moral burden shifts from the marginalized proving their personhood to the powerful interrogating the systems that let them forget it.

The subtext is also strategic. By treating “inhuman” as a behavior rather than an essence, he denies the comfort of writing off racists as monsters. If inhumanity is something people do, then people can be made to stop - but not through vibes. Through consequences, exposure, and structural change. It’s a radical form of optimism that doesn’t flatter anyone.

Context matters: Cleaver emerges from the Black Power era, a moment when “be patient” was the default response to Black demands for safety and dignity. Coming from a former Black Panther and prison intellectual, the sentence carries the pressure of lived collision with state force. It’s not a gentle appeal to hearts; it’s a diagnosis of a nation that already knows better and keeps choosing otherwise.