Quotes About Oppression

threads of power and domination a palimpsest of greed

It in no way diminishes our concern about racist oppression for us to acknowledge that our human experience is so complex that we cannot understand it if we only understand racism. Fighting against sexist oppression is important for black liberation, for as long as sexism divides black women and men we cannot concentrate our energies on resisting racism.

Sexist discrimination has prevented white women from assuming the dominant role in the perpetuation of white racial imperialism, but it has not prevented white women from absorbing, supporting, and advocating racist ideology or acting individually as racist oppressors in various spheres of American life.

Those men who accepted the myth that black women were matriarchs did regard black females as a threat to their personal power. Such thinking is not at all peculiar to black men. Most men in a patriarchal society fear and resent women who do not assume traditional passive roles. By shifting the responsibility for the unemployment of black men onto black women and away from themselves, white racist oppressors were able to establish a bond of solidarity with black men based on mutual sexism.

Women's liberationists, white and black, will always be at odds with one another as long as our idea of liberation is based on having the power white men have.

Boys brutalized and victimized by patriarchy more often than not become patriarchal, embodying the abusive patriarchal masculinity that they once clearly recognized as evil. Few men brutally abused as boys in the name of patriarchal maleness courageously resist the brainwashing and remain true to themselves. Most males conform to patriarchy in one way or another.

Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives. Most importantly, feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a ready-made identity or role one can step into.

La sororidad nunca habría sido posible a través de las fronteras de raza y clase si las mujeres individualmente no hubieran estado dispuestas a desprenderse de su poder para dominar y explotar a grupos subordinados de mujeres.

Most American women, particularly white women, have not decolonized their thinking either in relation to the racism, sexism, and class elitism they hold towards less powerful groups of women in this society or the masses of women globally.

Black liberation struggle must be re-visioned so that it is no longer equated with maleness. We need a revolutionary vision of black liberation, one that emerges from a feminist standpoint and addresses the collective plight of black people.

What we as women need to ask ourselves is: In what context within patriarchy do women create space where we can protect our genius? It's a very, very difficult question.

For black females, and males too, that means learning about the myriad ways racism, sexism, class exploitation, homophobia, and various other structures of domination operate in our daily lives to undermine our capacity to be self-determining.

They persist in our daily life and they undermine our capacity to live fully and joyously. They even prevent us from participating in organized collective struggle aimed at ending domination and transforming society.

Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.

We do know that patriarchal masculinity encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male.

The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies with a vision of social change that takes into consideration the ways interlocking systems of classism, racism, and sexism work to keep women exploited and oppressed

loving practice is not aimed at simply giving an individual greater life satisfaction; it is extolled as the primary way we end domination and oppression.

Black men in America have rarely romanticized labor, largely because they have for the most part performed less desirable tasks. They knew that performing jobs society deemed menial with bosses and supervisors harassing and persecuting them was not fulfilling.

So frequently in the introductions to these works, authors would state that comprehensive studies of the social status of black women were needed but were yet to be written. I often wondered why no one was interested in writing such books.

All too frequently in the women's movement it was assumed one could be free of sexist thinking by simply adopting the appropriate feminist rhetoric; it was further assumed that identifying oneself as oppressed freed one from being an oppressor.

Had all feminist thinkers expressed outrage at patriarchal violence perpetrated by women, placing it on an equal footing with male violence against women, it would have been and will be harder for the public to dismiss attention given patriarchal violence by seeing it as an and-male agenda.

Although the contemporary feminist movement was initially motivated by the sincere desire of women to eliminate sexist oppression, it takes place within the framework of a larger, more powerful cultural system that encourages women and men to place the fulfillment of indiivdual aspirations above their desire for collective change.

it is equally essential that we address without fear those who exploit, oppress, and dominate us. If women remain unable to speak to and about men in a feminist voice then our challenge to male domination on other fronts is seriously undermined.

When a little boy learns that his powerful mother, who controls his life really has no power within a patriarchy, it confuses him and causes rage.