Systemic Advantage Quotes

Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own - nobody.

Although globalization and technological change have disrupted traditional work arrangements, both processes have the potential to benefit everyone. The fact that they have not suggests that the wealthy have captured the benefits for themselves.

There are a lot of Americans who do not realize that their financial comfort is a consequence of conditions and programs in this country that made it possible for them to be wealthy.

Social class has worked for years. Born into the right family, go to the right schools, even if you're not super bright to start with, you'll turn out bright. You go to the right university, you get the right job, you have the right connections, you'll make it to the top. Job done, very efficient.

The more we allow Republicans to concentrate the lion's share of wealth in the hands of a few, the more power these wealthy few will have. And they will use this power to continue rewriting the rules of both our economy and our political system in their favor.

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'

Even if you never do anything about this, you've benefited from an unjust system. You're already the winner in a game that was rigged to your advantage from the start.

It turns out that the rich are much better placed to feed at the public trough. The poor get crumbs.

For generations, Americans who aren't rich have been generous and admiring of their wealthy compatriots - want a country where people who work hard can succeed, where the same rules apply to everyone. They expect to have their own shot at getting rich. But increasingly, they are seeing that the game is rigged.

The game is rigged to work for those who already have money and power.

There are all kinds of ways in which especially white men in this country have been helped by the government.

You can't control the fact that you are born a white man or born into wealth. When people say, 'Check your privilege,' they're saying, 'Acknowledge how these factors helped you move through life.' They're not saying apologize for it.

Whether the Bushes, or whoever they are, they always end up in the end with the money and the ability to really blow away anybody who dares challenge them.

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

The great white advantage has been living inside history, adapting to its constant demands, nurturing the values and the habits of life that allow one to keep pace. This is the cultural capital that whites too often take for granted and rarely think of insisting on in the former victims of exclusion.

I want you to admit that there is such a thing as white privilege.

Our politics has more than one kind of incumbent. There are the officeholders, and there are the people and corporations that have already made it in America, that want to protect and enlarge the advantages that they get from them.

A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don't have an advantage or this and that. I've said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.

I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.

You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own..

Privilege has its own way of seeing the world. It's not about the kind of people they are; it's about the situation they're in.

When you talk about "white privilege", you're talking about something systemic. When you're talking about "black privilege" it's something spiritual because we as black people tap into a divine system that a lot of other cultures and races can't tap into and that system allows us to prosper in spite of everything that's been thrown our way from slavery to segregation to mass incarceration. We have a privilege pre-ordained by God that nothing and no one can stop.

Black college-educated people got to where they are on the backs of domestic help, meaning their parents and grandparents. So people should not forget how they got to where they are.