Daily Inspiration Quote by Jasmine Guy

Fear is doing a lot of quiet damage in Jasmine Guy's line, and she names it without dressing it up. As an actress who came up in the late-80s/90s mainstream and has spent decades in public view, Guy understands how quickly audiences sort people into legible types: familiar, safe, “one of us” versus foreign, suspect, “other.” Her word choice is plain on purpose. “Tend to” makes the impulse sound normal, almost inevitable, like a reflex you can notice rather than deny. That’s the trapdoor: if fear is framed as a moral failing from the start, people stop listening. If it’s framed as a human default, you have a chance to intervene.

The pivot is “But if you aren't careful.” She’s not describing bigotry as a thunderbolt; she’s describing it as neglect. The subtext is that prejudice often isn’t born from ideology but from inattention: letting discomfort harden into stories, letting a single unfamiliar accent or custom become a proxy for threat. “Careful” is doing ethical work here. It suggests vigilance, self-editing, an ongoing practice rather than a one-time declaration of tolerance.

Contextually, the quote reads like a response to a culture that sells “difference” as spectacle while punishing it in policy and daily interaction. Guy’s intent isn’t to shame fear; it’s to warn that fear, unexamined, becomes permission. Bigotry doesn’t arrive announcing itself. It arrives as a feeling you never bothered to question.