Quotes About Oppression

did i think i was god that i had to lie and take it did i think then i was a mountain or a hill or a ridge and who told me that and who decided stones had no rights for stones can waste away from being denied from being abused and who decided who is the ploughed and who ploughs and why did i not get up and why not go away and what would have happened if i had resisted..

You think as they do that suffering from cruelty or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is matter of power.

Black woman hard to laugh, for she must keep it secret and quiet-like for all white man suspicious of negro mirth.

Better to be with the ancestors than to live bonded to somebody else, who might be kind, who might be cruel, who might even make you master to many slaves of your own, but was still master over you.

But some fire don't go out, they go quiet under the ash, waiting for one little dry stick to feed. So the white man sleep with one eye open, waiting for the fire next time. That fire coming.

Rastaman don't deal with negativity so oppression is now downpression even though there is no up in the word. Dedicate is livicate, I and I, well God knows what that means, but it sounds like somebody trying for their own holy trinity but forgetting the name of the third person.

The white man say we're fighting for freedom from totalitarianism, terrorism and tyranny, but nobody know what he mean. I

Then the white man talk about how some people trying to use smooth talk to win people over and how totalitarianism always happens with consent and we nod like we understand.

the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack.

see how the white womens goin' look and hear how white womens laugh in the colonies. She think of white flesh and black flesh, that really be brown flesh by blood and the two flesh melt into one flesh that don't know colour. Then Lilith wonder if she dreaming because dreaming is one thing God never allow negro to do.

Everybody know that condom and birth control was white man scheme to kill off black people, but he don't care.

Sometimes I have to remind even him that three feet north of this vagina is a brain. Still, even an American man don't like when a woman's too smart, especially a Third World woman whom it is his duty to educate.

killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness. Madness

All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.

But sometime, a negro get tired of white man stomping so he grab the foot, twist and break it. Sometime a negro say, Enough done be enough now.

Seem that if baby get left in manger he would scratch up, bite up and dead by the third day. But white people think this be the greatest thing. The baby grow up and they kill him, and white people think this be even greater. It make plenty sense that white people would get so much mirth and joy out of this 'cause nobody kill for fun like backra.

Homer whiter than plenty white man, it seem. But nothing make a nigger more black than whip scars. Lilith don't want none of it.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer.

You sent your last letter months ago about the poems you could not write, no words to sing when the president swears that God breathes the psalms of armies in his ear, and flags twirl by the millions to fascinate us like dogs at the dinner table.

you mailed your banned poems cloaked as letters to your sister-in-law because the silence of the world was a storm flooding your ears.

Es cierto que nuestra desigualdad empieza cuando aquellos conquistadores se quedan con todo porque son distintos: que su título para mantener el poder era esa diferencia, esa desigualdad.

No es lo mismo ser racista en blanco y negro —un inglés en la India, un belga en el Congo— que ser racista con tal despliegue de matices; se necesita mucha más atención, más mala leche, más interés en el asunto.

Housekeeping, to her, was a way to cultivate a woman's submission and steal time, and she wanted nothing of it.