Quotes About Oppression

There's always some kind of blacklist throughout history. But the difference is, in America they usually let you live.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

I've had many incidents in my life of racism. I've been thrown on the ground. I've been frisked. I've been arrested so many times I couldn't tell you. I have no need to talk about it.

That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known - the plantations - because they attempted to exercise their 'democratic' right to vote.

The kids growing up in the apartheid era were so restricted and angry - if they spoke out against it, they were thrown in jail.

'Oppressed' is one of the terms that's very, very sellable and easily thrown around these days because everybody feels it, no matter what side you're on. We thrive on it. We're addicted to it.

We used to joke that we were more scared of the police than we were of the devil. You had to have I.D. with you all the time or else the police would throw you in jail. I got thrown in jail twice for not having I.D., and walking in there was like walking through the gates of hell.

To have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rumselling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to... be longer quietly submitted to.

It is sad when a particular group of people, no matter what they are, are able to... thrust their way of life on a society.

You can so easily be dismissed as a thug or hysterical if you're a woman if you don't keep your rage in check.

Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs... gangsters who lust after fortunes and power.

When you had thugs and bullies and killers imposing their will on their own people or other people - if you don't respond to it, it just keeps coming because they're encouraged by their own success.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

Men often still expect women to be under their thumb.

There's a basic rule of thumb that the more a culture oppresses women, or oppresses anyone, the more culturally preoccupied they are with that.

Yet thousands of slaves throughout the southern states are thus handed over by the masters who own them to masters who do not; and it does not require much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious.

The slaveholders are terrible for promising to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will do thus and so, and when the time of fulfillment comes, and one claims the promise, they, forsooth, recollect nothing of the kind; and you are, like as not, taunted with being a liar.

We treat Black and brown kids who can't vote yet, can't join the military, can't rent a car or even buy a lottery ticket - like adults in our criminal legal system. We deprive them of their joy and their youth. Children who deserve to live rich and abundant lives.

A lot of people are afraid of the idea of enslavement, and that's because it's tied to so much shame and guilt... That is the big elephant in the room, but a part of why we're afraid to attack that subject matter is because of the way we've been taught about it.

Because homophobia is still largely driven by the church, it's legitimised. It's also tied to sexism, because those two are never far apart.

What's holding us back from being free is fear. Whether it be fear of those on the outside who don't understand queer people or any other minority, or the actual minorities themselves being scared. The lack of freedom we experience is all tied to fear.