Quotes About Injustice

When I first went to Israel, I saw soldiers pushing Palestinians around and thought, 'I can't stand this'. Then I'd meet somebody in a bar saying what wonderful people the Palestinians are and what mamzers the Jews are, and I'd think, 'Hang on'. It should be hard to make up your mind on any serious subject.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.

I loved the Woody Guthrie tradition of speaking about what's happening to the country.

Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.

First it was the whites, and then their Negro message bearers. And the word was always the same: 'Tell your sons to take their names off the books. Don't show up at the courthouse voting day.'

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody's ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the 'n' word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren't pretty or they weren't rich or they weren't clever.

We didn't exist. Ronald Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until 1987. I've tried desperately to get a meeting in the White House; Gay Men's Health Crisis is already an established organization. I have a certain presence.

While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.

In this culture, the phrase 'black woman' is not synonymous with 'tender,' or 'gentle.' It's as if those words couldn't possibly speak to the reality of black females.

No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.

A lot of groups get dirty deals. They work hard and have to get a job after their career is over.

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

But after the spirit of conquest had changed the first governments, all the succeeding ones have, in general, proved one continued series of injustice, which has reigned in all countries for almost four thousand years.

At about an age when most children start full time schooling, hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries start a lifetime of drudgery in factories and fields, working 12-16 hours daily.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I used to be very interested in the history of women's rights in this country and in other countries. I tried to learn as much as I could about it, and more than anything, I would be called gay. It was phenomenal. But if a boy has something to say, he is appreciated; he's even popular. If a girl says something, it's instantly a threat.

I just feel like if I really believe what Dr. King said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,' then I should be compelled to use my God-given platform to effect change.

Can we be against anti-Semitism and understand that it's at the root of white supremacy? So you can't tell me to combat anti-Semitism if you're not ready to join me and tell me, 'Let's end white nationalism and white supremacy,' which is really the real threat on all Americans.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

The problem in the world is the oppression of man by man; it this which threatens existence.

The Yanukovych regime is a mafia, which regularly threatens, imprisons, murders, or disappears political opponents as well as those whose possessions it covets.

People could be really horrible, you know? They would threaten my parents.

People don't flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to. Why? Because they don't have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don't have basic things like water, education, health.