Best Quotes from 12 Angry Men by Gregory S. Parks with Page Numbers

The lesson for the day was that there is a special Bill of Rights for nonwhite people in the United States—one that applies with particular severity to black men.

This legacy has been denied for so long that my skin now signals to many that I must be at least an accomplice to any crime that occurs somewhere in the vicinity of my person.

It did not matter to the officers or the bouncers that my brother was going to graduate from Brooklyn College that June after working and going to school full time for the last six years.

What should have mattered was that we were innocent.

Our basic civil rights should be respected no matter who we are or the institutions with which we are affiliated.

After our overnight crash course in the true criminal law of this country, I know from firsthand experience that the Bill of Rights for Black Men in America completely contradicts the one that was ratified for the society at large.

It should have mattered that we had no record. But it didn’t. What mattered was that we were black and we were there.

In a fair and just society, none of that should matter.

Yet White Supremacy was alive and well enough to handcuff three innocent young men and bend them over the hood of a squad car.

I wanted to tell everyone watching just how hard she has worked to give us more control over our own destinies than she had while growing up.

I have a right to talk to anyone I like, wherever I like.

Racial profiling isn’t racist because the people who designed these stop-and-frisk policies were racists; racial profiling is racist in its function.

Race-based policing can still be found in law and policy, but it is more ingrained than words on paper.

Racial profiling is a cultural practice that arises from a power relationship that predates all of us.

And the way we see each other is often informed by our history together, or the lack thereof.

I have ancestors that were Cherokee and Chickasaw.

I imagine there are Irish immigrants in my family too, given my Irish surname.

I look back on that night now and it all looks like a bad cliché.

People want to tell their story, especially if they believe they’re being victimized.

At root, it is a way of reinforcing racial identities we would not choose for ourselves.

"A people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots."

"You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do."

"I was exposed to whatever undeserved fury was going to be meted out."

"It is therefore doubly painful to me to see young people, especially young black people, without any real memory of the past."

"The struggle begun by such pioneers as Jackie Robinson still remains only a promise."

"Some might counter that I have nothing to complain about—that I have achieved worldly success far beyond what most people achieve."

"Charles Barkley... told a roomful of media people that, although he was habitually treated with smiles, friendliness, and respect, the real question was how an anonymous black person would be treated by the same people."

"At no time during this course of events did I make any aggressive or hostile gestures toward either Searle or Woessner."

"This comparison provides a rare official look at the different perspectives on profiling: what the police often say to justify their actions versus how the people profiled describe their experience."

"I felt totally out of control."

"I might be having a conversation with my friends or just hanging out for a little bit."

"They feel like they can do whatever and just keep on walking."

"It's like I'm doing something wrong when I'm not."

"I can't stand there because I know I'm going to get arrested."

"You can’t even pass money around. Say my friend wants to give me a dollar. That’s seen as a drug transaction."

"I respectfully tell them I don’t [have anything on me]. But they still check me."

"What’s the point? If I try to argue with them, there are going to be more cops coming."

"Maybe if they were to change certain things, like how they act in the community, they’d be good."

"If they were nice to us, we would be nice to them."

"We want respect, but they treat us all the same."

"Making use of the judicial system makes good sense."

"If we made greater use of the judicial system, we would get more results."

"Justice is a hard-won thing and each generation has to win it and win it again."

"Change requires, sometimes, a certain amount of sacrifice."

"I want to believe that, as a citizen in this country, I have equal protection under the law."

"If people feel that they can do things and get away with them—then of course it continues."

"We weren’t far from the police station... I just knew that I could go talk to someone reasonable."

"I think we were stopped because it was after twelve o’clock at night, there were four black people in a car..."

"Many African Americans feel what’s going on is criminal."

"We really are glad that you went all the way through with this, because this happens to us all the time."

‘Who knows,’ Glover pointedly asks, ‘how these experiences will tally up in my psyche?’

‘I’m not a full citizen. I’m just a suspect.’

‘The cop continued on with the line of questioning, and I continued to remain silent or spoke just enough to say ‘no’ to his continued requests to search my car.’

‘I was just hurt. Here I am—a young father and hardworking guy—on my way home from making the money that feeds my daughter and keeps a roof over our heads.’

‘Despite their apology, they seemed unsympathetic to how I felt.’

‘My freedom is illusory.’

‘I’m guilty until proven innocent. My innocence is not presumed, I have to explain it.’

‘It hit me that I was not to be a protected citizen, but rather that citizens were to be protected from me.’

‘In tolerating these transgressions day in and day out, I sometimes feel like my humanity is being chipped away.’

‘I wonder when I will really be free.’

"The incidents in the story that follows speak to the inescapable nature of racial profiling in the United States."

"Perhaps foolishly, I insisted on knowing why we were being stopped: 'We have a right to know, don’t we? We’re not criminals, after all.'"

"My assertion of my rights, my attempts to maintain my dignity, and my confronting authority might have signaled that I was not from here."

"With that awareness, I simply sat there— quietly. My brother did the same. We were in a state of rightlessness."

"We were being 'pushed' through the racial body of America to be born again; a new motherland awaited us."

"Our only escape, then, was to prove that, in a social meaning sense, we were not what, phenotypically, we quite obviously were: black."

"My eyes followed each officer into his car. As they drove off... it was over. Another day in the life, for the police and for us. Simple injustice."

"We understood that we were already black Americans, that our race had naturalized us."

"Our privacy had been invaded, we experienced a loss of dignity, and our blackness had been established—once more—as a criminal identity."

"Perhaps we wanted to put the incident behind us— to move on, to start forgetting. Perhaps we needed time to recover our dignity, to repossess our bodies."

I just try to stay out of their view as much as possible.

If you give us respect, we give you respect.

This state is like a police state, truthfully.

They said that if I was to go there and my mother isn’t home, they would arrest me for trespassing.

You see with your eyes and not with your hands.

At the end of the day, all cops are not bad. But the majority are.

I don’t know if they can even do it. The relationship between people and the cops right now is so messed up.

My general feeling when it comes to police? I hate ’em.

I wanted my money! You took my money!

Ain’t nothin’ changed. Everything is still the same.

"I have been in this place before. I know that answering the question will be the beginning, not the end, of an unpleasant conversation."

"Have a nice evening, officers," and head toward home.

"Is it against the law to walk on the sidewalk if I don’t live around here?"

"This is not apartheid South Africa, and I don’t need a pass card."

"I have seen people, mostly white, walking down the street at all times of the day and night, and I have never heard them questioned about their right to be there."

"It is unfortunate, but other uppity Negroes have gotten themselves shot for less than what I did."

"Because the officers were black, I was especially angry. They should’ve known better."

"Ultimately, my protest is less about privacy and more about discrimination."

"Race is so imprecise a proxy for criminality that it is, in the end, useless."

"Sometimes the law gets me confused about the difference. Kennedy is correct: It is a confusion everyone should share."

I feel drawn toward Asheville in order to recover my childhood; Asheville, no matter how rough it was, was still the place of my beginnings and my childhood.

Finding a job is never an easy task for a black man. Combine that with my level of education and the 'Great Recession,' and it’s even worse.

Despite the bad economic situation, I’m anything but complacent. I support myself through hard work and my music.

My only crime was being black in a white club.

I live a profiled life. I know how it feels to be a 'problem.'

Even though Asheville has changed so much that I can hardly recognize it anymore, one thing remains the same—it is still racially segregated.

The color line will endure as long as black men are understood as 'evil,' 'unclassed,' of an 'illicit nature.'

I wondered if John or Chris were also there with me, in another room somewhere.

I wanted to sleep—just go to sleep to get through the night.

I looked homeward, but then I remember that I can’t go home again.

"If you try to tell the people in most Negro communities that the police are their friends, they just laugh at you." —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Self-defense is not an act of violence, but rather an act of self-love and self-preservation."

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." —Frederick Douglass

"Not givin’ in, I told myself, attempting to prevent my blood from bubbling, desperately trying to prevent the death, which was waiting above the scene like a vulture, from occurring."

"We must never mistake the self-defense of the victim for the violence of the attacker."

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong, which will be imposed upon them."

"If we must die, O let us nobly die, so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain; then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us though dead!" - Claude McKay

"I charge you to prove that Artrell’s death was not over-kill, that he did not die... until then we will not be silenced because we are empowered in our belief that..."

"It is organizing in such a way as to attack the injustice at its roots and save the lives of our unborn children and grandchildren."

"Instead of protecting and serving the community, these cops served Dead Prez with nightsticks and handcuffs."

The time is past for description. The time is now for prescription.

It’s not enough to talk about police abuse; we have to 'do something' about it.

Know your rights, teach others, and stand up for your rights.

File complaints. Take legal action, even if you represent yourself.

Know your history and present condition.

In the end you will be you One that’s done all the things you’ve set out to do.

Stand! There’s a cross for you to bear Things to go through if you’re going anywhere.

Join an organization; join and form coalitions.

Reach out to the community. Survey your community for problems and solutions.

Use the media, or make your own, including social media.