Structural Oppression Quotes

What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes.

The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors…. The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood/

People who are denied access to power are also denied the opportunity to make or influence decisions to live a better life out of poverty and claim their rights.

The Negro is going to be relegated to the menial jobs and will not get his promotions because the competition is too tough.

The effort we make in trying to get white people to let us alone or invest in us is looking pretty futile…. I am a reluctant separatist

It's not new to attempt to vilify the minority that speaks about their oppression. That's not a new thing.

Revolutions are not improvised. They are not made at will by individuals, and not even by the most powerful associations. They come about through force of circumstances, and are independent of any deliberate will or conspiracy.

Hillary Clinton could say she was a woman and running for president. And Sarah Palin could say she was a woman and running for vice-president. But Obama couldn't say, 'I'm black and I'm running for president.' It couldn't come out of his mouth. He couldn't say that because, if he did, he'd lose votes.

There is no birthright in the white skin that it shall say that wherever it goes, to any nation, amongst any people, there the people of the country shall give way before it, and those to whom the land belongs shall bow down and become its servants.

It's really obvious that we have very serious inequality in this country across many different spectrums. Yes, we can talk about the form of protest or the way it's done or this or that. But it's still not really the conversation that I think we desperately need to have more of in this country.

In America, I feel black with all of the rubbish that comes with it.

The Negro is not disposed to work.

What we call real estate--the solid ground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

The word ‘race’ is ghettoizing language that perpetuates seeing people of color as a different species. The word encourages fear and distrust. Language is the fuel that feeds the great racist generator… for the sake of sharing a common though inaccurate language in order to foster a solution, most of us, myself included, will continue to talk about race as if it actually existed — and racism because it does actually exist.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

When we understand [that] American democracy and white supremacy are inextricably linked, we can see how tortuous our efforts have been to accommodate the value gap.

Is Donald Trump a fascist? It's an interesting question that has generated insightful commentary over the past few months, with the best answers situating Trumpian illiberalism within America's long history of racial oppression, slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the ongoing backlash to the loss of white privilege.

The wiping out of crime is so largely an economic question because much crime arises from the fact that children grow up in undesirable surroundings and have parents that have been conditioned by the same type of environment.

Wherever black people are in America, criminalization exists. Wherever there is a white-dominant space, deep racism exists as well - no matter how progressive. If you cut too far into that progressive, if you do something that's too radical, white racism will emerge.

One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor

It saddens me that African Americans - when they express their pain, when they protest about police violence, when they question inequality, when they raise issues of bondage and discrimination - African Americans are seen as not patriotic.

I've seen and always been extremely aware of racism... casual racism, serious racism... all of that.