Quotes About Oppression

El grito de los pobres no siempre es justo, pero si no lo escuchas, nunca sabrás lo que es la justicia".

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)—the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress—is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders.

the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture

quoting a socialist writer in the San Francisco Voice of Labor: It is a terrible thing to think that the poor workers of this country should be sent to kill and wound the poor workers of Spain merely because a few leaders may incite them to do so.

Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may.

grievances of the lowest classes mingled with

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. . . .

Racism was becoming more and more practical.

In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget—the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change. To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one's humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

Because, by 1619, a million blacks had already been brought from Africa to South America and the Caribbean, to the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, to work as slaves.

people are saddled with names given them by their conquerors.

Yes, patience. I recall a Bertolt Brecht fable. A man living alone answers a knock at the door. There stands Tyranny, armed and powerful, who asks, "Will you submit?" The man does not reply. He steps aside. Tyranny enters and takes over. The man serves him for years. Then Tyranny mysteriously becomes sick from food poisoning. He dies. The man opens the door, gets rid of the body, comes back to the house, closes the door behind him, and says, firmly, "No.

There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States. And

What if these different despised groups—the Indians, the slaves, the poor whites—should combine?

it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

Is it equitable that 99, rather 999, should suffer for the Extravagance or Grandeur of one, especially when it is considered that men frequently owe their Wealth to the impoverishment of their Neighbors?

One of the important things I learned at Spelman is that it's easy to mistake silence for acceptance.

patroonship

As we all know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we're afraid we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the woman or shut her up because we're afraid that she might castrate us. The remedy is to gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.