Structural Disadvantage Quotes

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? … Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.

Incumbents have too much power and challengers have too little opportunity.

If you search for poverty, you'll find it, often in the family. Why? Because the family makes this great investment, from which we all benefit, but for which no-one helps. We have to point the spotlight on the family, and make political choices that sustain the family.

Unfortunately, the way the world is constructed, a lot of people have no chance, from day one.

No matter what Bernie Sanders did, no matter how many delegates he was getting, Hillary Clinton was always going to trump this, and Bernie never had a chance. That's the real rigging of an election; that's the real interference in an election, and nobody talks about that, including Crazy Bernie.

If you belong to the underclass, you are already guilty.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

Poverty is not just a material problem. Poverty is something wider: it is about powerlessness, about being deprived of basic opportunities and freedom of choice.

There's no question that to some extent there are structural disadvantages built in, not just for women but for other minority groups who don't hold power at the executive level either at the company or in the industry. My position is not just "Oh, okay, anyone can overcome those." It's just as we work to get more women and people in minority groups at higher levels in positions of power, what are our options?