Quotes About Oppression

El-Masri lies under gravel and shingle, with no part of him visible aboveground except his left hand

Well, you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're all fucking peasants As far as I can see

Who slays a tyrant is no murderer but patriot. A deliverer of his country, as Harmodius and Aristogeiton!

Audre Lord famously argued that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.

In struggle one not only fights against something--injustice, oppression--but one must struggle for something equally real but positive. That's the other part of the equation.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn't a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

Si un homme blanc veut me lyncher, c'est son problème. S'il a le pouvoir de me lyncher, c'est mon problème. Le racisme n'est pas une question d'attitude, c'est une question de pouvoir »

God is always waiting for us to come to Him, so we can be set free from anything that keeps us from becoming more like Him. To the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, God said He saw their oppression, heard their cry, and knew their sorrows, so He came to deliver them (Exodus 3:7-8). Know that He will do the same for you.

defeated Senate candidate Roy Moore's passionate claim that blacks were better off during slavery.

The Palestinians try hard to forget when they should remember. The Israelis try hard to remember when they should forget. The Palestinians refuse to be victims. The Israelis make sure that they remain the only victims.

I tell you, Huda, with the with the service-free arnona they impose on us and the many fines and penalties we East Jerusalem Arabs pay them, we've become the casino where they always win... or even better, the cash cow that they continue to milk.

It has come as a great revelation to me," I wrote her, "that abolition is different from the desire for racial equality. Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it's not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition.

How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't—it saddens me to think of it—but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks.

Their laughter would ring out abruptly, a sound Mother welcomed. "Our slaves are happy," she would boast. It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn't contentment, but survival.

A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost—don't see it, don't hear it, but it's always hovering round on ready.

You think there's no detriment in a slave learning to read? There are sad truths in our world, and one is that slaves who read are a threat.

The past week, Mother had denied her a pass to the market for some minor, forgettable reason, and she'd taken it hard. Her market excursions were the acme of her days, and trying to commiserate, I'd said, "I'm sorry, Handful, I know how you must feel." It seemed to me I did know what it felt to have one's liberty curtailed, but she blazed up at me. "So we just the same, me and you? That's why you the one to shit in the pot and I'm the one to empty it?

Psychotherapist Anne Wilson Schaef compares living in patriarchy to living in polluted air. "When you are in the middle of pollution, you are usually unaware of it. You eat in it, sleep in it, work in it, and sooner or later start believing that is just the way the air is," she writes.41

But benevolent patriarchy is still patriarchy.

Angelina, I think of you as my friend, the dearest of friends, and it tortures me to go against you, but now is the time to stand with the slave. The time will come for us to take up the woman question, but not yet. The time to assert one's right is when it's denied!

When we stop perceiving, assuming, and theorizing from the top, the dominant view, and instead go to the bottom of the social pyramid and identify with those who are oppressed and disenfranchised, a whole new way of relating opens up. Until we look from the bottom up we have seen nothing.

For women, the cruelest state is to be denied; for men it's to be stricken with shame