Quotes About Inequality

Solange Gott ein Mann ist, nicht ein Paar, kann das Leben einer Frau, nur so bleiben wie es heute ist, nämlich erbärmlich, die Frau als Proletarier der Schöpfung, wenn auch noch so elegant verkleidet.

Here in the United States we appear to be becoming more and more a country devoted to amenities for the rich, more and more neglectful of the poor.

Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death. The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate.

I laughed too, but not at the hateful jokes made on my people.I laughed because, except that she was white, the big movie star looked just like my mother. Except that she lived in a big mansion with thousands servants. she lived just like my mother. And it was funny to think of the whitefolks' not knowing that the woman they were adoring could be my mother's twin, except that she was white and my mother was prettier. Much prettier.

If one was dying, it had to be done in style if the dying took place in whitefolks' part of town.

The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate.

Depression, at least, did not discriminate.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.

The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate. His experience raised the question of worth and values, of aggressive inferiority and aggressive arrogance.

The white kids had better vocabularies than I and, what was more appalling, less fear in the classrooms. They never hesitated to hold up their hands in response to a teacher's question; even when they were wrong they were wrong aggressively, while I had to be certain about all my facts before I dared to call attention to myself.

She was born poor and powerless in a land where power is money and money is adored. Born black in a land where might is white and white is adored. Born female in a land where decisions are masculine and masculinity controls.

I thought about black women and wondered how we got to be the way we were. In our country, white men were always in superior positions; after them came white women, then black men, then black women, who were historically on the bottom stratum. How did it happen that we could nurse a nation of strangers, be maids to multitudes of people who scorned us, and still walk with some majesty and stand with a degree of pride?

The South, in general, and Stamps, Arkansas, in particular had had hundreds of years' experience in demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. Poor white children had the license to address lauded and older blacks by their first names or by any names they could create.

If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?

Black people rarely forgave whites for being ragged, unkempt and uncaring. There was a saying which explained the disapproval: 'You been white all your life. Ain't got no further along than this? What ails you?

I made no attempt to wipe away the tears. I could not claim a forefather who came to America on the Mayflower. Nor did any ancestor of mine amass riches to leave me free from toil. My great-grandparents were illiterate when their fellow men were signing the Declaration of Independence, and the first families of my people were bought separately and sold apart, nameless and without traces – yet there was this: 'Deep River My home is over Jordan.

It's all right if we do a little robbing now." This belief appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.

Harlem Hopscotch One foot down, then hop! It's hot. Good things for the ones that's got. Another jump, now to the left. Everybody for hisself. In the air, now both feet down. Since you black, don't stick around. Food is gone, the rent is due, Curse and cry and then jump two. All the people out of work, Hold for three, then twist and jerk. Cross the line, they count you out. That's what hopping's all about. Both feet flat, the game is done. They think I lost. I think I won.

The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Ganguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.

For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.

I wanted to be a woman, but that seemed to me to be a world to which I was to be eternally refused entrance.

Lighting: a hundred Watts Detroit, Newark and New York Screeching nerves, exploding minds lives tied to a policeman's whistle a welfare worker's doorbell finger