Quotes About Inequality

To see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own—such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be any moment.

You go on about reasons, Cora said, call things by other names, as if it changes what they are. But that doesn't make them true. ....but we have all been branded, even if you can't see it - inside, if not without.

But we have all been branded even if you can't see it, inside if not without—and the wound from Randall's cane was the very same thing, marking her as his.

The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be.

The white boys didn't get it as bad as the black boys, but they were not in Nickel because the world cared overmuch. Big Chet was their Great White Hope.

Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else's good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person's hell.

Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door. The GI Bill fixed things pretty good for the white boys he served with, but the uniform meant different things depending who wore it. What was the point of a no-interest loan when a white bank won't let you step inside?

Stolen bodies working stolen land.

In America the quirk was that people were things. Best to cut your losses on an old man who won't survive a trip across the ocean. A young buck from strong tribal stock got customers into a froth. A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money. If you were a thing—a cart or a horse or a slave—your value determined your possibilities. She minded her place.

A free black walks different than a slave," he said. "White people recognize it immediately, even if they don't know it. Walks different, talks different, carries himself different. It's in the bones.

She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them.

Black hands built the White House

He was a curious boy. He wanted to be a dentist, a pragmatic choice. Teacher, doctor, preacher, undertaker. What a colored boy can aspire to in a world like this. Colored people always got bad teeth, always got a soul needed tending. Always dying.

Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?

The black city and the white city: overlapping, ignorant of each other, separate and connected by tracks.

Since when do white people care about reason? They gonna put that cop in jail? The bartender looked up from his racing form. Put a white cop in jail for killing a black boy? Believe in the fucking tooth fairy. Buford knows what's up, Pepper said. Newspapers talking about 'looting,' Buford continued. Should ask the Indians about looting. This whole country's founded on taking other people's shit. How'd they fill their museums? Tutankhamun.

When you come into a rich man's house, the only place to split is in his face.

Enquanto houver lugares onde seja possível a asfixia social; em outras palavras, e de um ponto de vista mais amplo ainda, enquanto sobre a terra houver ignorância e miséria, livros como este não serão inúteis.

Part of the problem is that these guys are jerks. They're knuckle-dragging, bone-headed bad guys and they really don't care if their actions hurt the women or the community. —MICHAEL SHIVELY, CRIMINOLOGIST N

Too many guilty people get off scot-free if they have money or influence.

In this city, the rich had some room, and the middle class had less, and the poor had none.

Whenever the degraded majority and the promoted minority came into conflict (and there were plenty of opportunities for this, starting with the distribution of food) the results were explosive.

could send everyone in America to live under the dictatorship in Turkmenistan. Or to spend a little time in a New Delhi slum. Maybe they'd gain a little perspective about how good they have it. But I can't. So instead, they'll listen to politicians tell them how they're getting

The hugely uneven distribution of wealth itself was forcing the country toward a boiling point. Add