DeRay Mckesson Quotes

DeRay Mckesson

Profession : Activist

Birth : July 9, 1985

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

DeRay Mckesson

The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.

DeRay Mckesson

Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths.

DeRay Mckesson

Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.

DeRay Mckesson

There will always be a rule. There will be people who break the rules. There will be consequences. We fundamentally think these things will be true for a time. The question becomes, What are the consequences? Who enforces the consequences? What are the worst consequences?

DeRay Mckesson

I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.

DeRay Mckesson

The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not.

DeRay Mckesson

I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.

DeRay Mckesson

I think my imagination about jobs was pretty limited. There were so few jobs that I actually saw people who looked like me in, that I imagined myself in, that I think I just stopped imagining.

DeRay Mckesson

Bowdoin was the first place that I fell in love with. When I visited, I just had never been to a place with that many resources and that much access to information. That was stuff that you saw in movies. I didn't know that existed in real life.

DeRay Mckesson

I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.

DeRay Mckesson

I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.

DeRay Mckesson

I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.

DeRay Mckesson

The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'

DeRay Mckesson

Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.

DeRay Mckesson

When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.

DeRay Mckesson

I'm not desensitized to death.

DeRay Mckesson

I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.

DeRay Mckesson

You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.

DeRay Mckesson

People are not as imaginative as they think they are.

DeRay Mckesson