7 Quotes by Bakari Sellers

The idea of health equity is about meeting people where they are, providing them with quality care no matter their backgrounds. In our case, it was a matter of life or death. We were in the position to seek people out, to find people who not only looked like us but who listened to us. Most white people get this benefit because of privilege; most black people, regardless of socioeconomics, do not.

Anytime I got angry as a child, or even as an adult, I would call my father to vent – and he always reminded me that anger, even when justified, is not enough. It’s never a substitute for a plan.

What really gets my attention are leaders who prevent their own citizens from having access to hospitals, decent schools, and clean water.

The reason I don’t let it bother me is something Stokely Carmichael said about racism and our reaction to it: “If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem, but if he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem.

In fact, per the CDC, college-educated black women are more likely to die during childbirth or pregnancy than non-college-educated women of any other race.

Whether you look back at Tulsa’s wealthy “Black Wall Street” of the early twentieth century or the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s or the Sellers family in Denmark circa 1950s and 1960s, black people and black power always meant being able to have economic self-sustainability and access to the ballot box.

There would not be a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama if it were not for the bravery of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972 under the slogan “Unbought and Unbossed.