Quotes About Oppression

In an oppressive society it may well be that *all* fantasies indulged in by the oppressor are destructive to the oppressed. To become involved in them in any way at all is, at the very least, to lose time defining yourself. To isolate the fantasy we must cleave to reality, to what *we* know, *we* feel, *we* think of life. Trusting our own experience and our own lives; embracing both the dark self and the light.

The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.

Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don't seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? Ask Sofia, she say. But I don't have to ast Sofia. I know white people never listen to colored, period. If they do, they only listen long enough to be able. to tell you what to do.

Los olinkas no creen que se deba educar a las niñas. Cuando pregunté a una madre por qué pensaba así, me dijo: Una mujer no es nada por sí misma. Solo por su marido puede ser algo. ¿Y qué puede ser?, le pregunté. La madre de sus hijos. Pues yo no soy madre de los hijos de nadie, y sin embargo soy alguien.

I thought black people superior people. Not simply superior to white people, because even without thinking about it much, I assumed almost everyone was superior to them; but to everyone. Only white people, after all, would blow up a Sunday school class and grin for television over their victory, i.e. , the death of four small black girls.

Although Africans once had a much better civilization than the European (though of course even the English do not say this: I get this from reading a man named J. A. Rogers) for several centuries they have fallen on hard times. Hard times is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's hard times were made harder by them.

Now we are beginning to ask the crucial question. If it is natural to be black and red or brown or yellow and if it is beautiful to resist oppression and if it is gorgeous to be of color and walking around free, then where does the problem lie? Who are these people that kill our children in the night?

This, then, was the power people like us had. The power to enslave others and to frustrate their dreams.

White folks is a miracle of affliction.

The jail you plan for me is the one in which you will rot

The men had decided they would be creator, and they went about dethroning woman systematically. To sell women and children for whom you no longer wished to assume responsibility or to sell those who were mentally infirm or who had in some way offended you, became a new tradition, an accepted way of life. As did the idea, later on, under the Mohametans, that a man could own many women, as he owned many cattle or hunting dogs.

She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

Madame, he said, when Aunt Theodosia finished her story and flashed her famous medal around the room, do you realize King Leopold cut the hands off workers who, in the opinion of his plantation overseers did not fulfill their rubber quota? Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

The white missionary before you would not let us have this ceremony, said Joseph. But the Olinka like it very much. We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?

Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.

When a movement awakens people to the possibilities of life, it seems unfair to frustrate them by then denying what they had thought was offered. But what was offered? What was promised? What was it all about? What good did it do? Would it have been better, as some have suggested, to leave the Negro people as they were, unawakened, unallied with one another, unhopeful about what to expect for their children in some future world?

Dear God, Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr —— say, Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good for – he don't finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa.

Why can't Tashi come to school? she asked me. When I told her the Olinka don't believe in educating girls she said, quick as a flash, They're like white people at home who don't want colored people to learn.

Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating.

Here they building a dam so they can flood out a Indian tribe that been there since time. And look at this, they making a picture bout that man that kilt all them women. The same man that play the killer is playing the priest. And look at these shoes they making now, she say. Try to walk a mile in a pair of them, she say. You be limping all the way home. And you see what they trying to do with that man that beat the Chinese couple to death. Nothing whatsoever.

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.

Because I know. Grown-up white men don't want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute." "They'll become anything for as long as it takes to steal some land.

The brilliance of enslaving the spirit is that it is an invisible prison from which the inmate appears to derive some comfort.