Nuseir Yassin Quotes

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

When you allow racial disparity and institutional inequity to affect one part of the country, eventually it's coming back to get everyone.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

There are millions out there who aren't getting an even break. They're being done down.

Minorities do not believe this country will give them a fair shake.

People across metro Detroit face discrimination every day in housing, employment, insurance - the list goes on. It might not always be explicit and in your face, but my residents know when they're being mistreated.

I don't think I know a single person who's a minority who hasn't experienced some form of discrimination at one time or another.

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

I think what we forget is that everybody loses when we keep unnecessary privilege. The cost to society overall is much greater.

It's kind of almost not fair that certain people don't get the opportunities that others get just because of where they are born or where they were brought up.

Now people like Susan Sarandon are noticing that people of color live this way?! This is the way I've always lived! What's happened is that it has now reached a level of national discourse where it's on the table. But they've never minded that we were treated like this off-stage.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

If money, education, and honesty will not bring to me as much privilege, as much equality as they bring to any American citizen, then they are to me a curse, and not a blessing.

I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.

We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.

Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

And the whole thing is that you're treated like a step-child. Here it was down here, everything in the black, because they were stealing, basically. Stealing from us old country boys down here.