Dave Zirin famous quotes

Racism is not about hurtful words, bruised feelings, political correctness, or refusing to call short people 'vertically challenged.' Racism is about the power to treat entire groups of people as something less than human—for the benefit of that power. That’s why a Native American sports mascot is far from harmless.
-- Dave Zirin

#Sports #Native American #Racism

I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back. I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.
-- Dave Zirin

#Country #Mean #Dark

This is hardly a South African problem, of course. We are confronting nothing less than a global system of brutal misogyny. Too many men across the world see too many women as repositories of their rage, frustration, narcissism or simply their will to enact violence.
-- Dave Zirin

#Frustration #Men #World

Sports has become such a big business that the line between journalism and being a broadcast partner for all intents and purposes has been obliterated.
-- Dave Zirin

#Sports #Purpose #Lines

The building of publicly funded stadiums has become a substitue for anything resembling an urban policy.
-- Dave Zirin

#Urban #Building #Stadiums

The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.

Remember that sports are meant to be fun. Don't let someone make the sport unfun for you.

After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that.

Unless you're one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. Somebody brought you.

I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try.

I've always been interested in the history of the West, our country and particularly as it relates to the Native Americans - the original Americans.

The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours...

But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.

There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.