Boots Riley Quotes

Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

I'm all for philosophical debates about race, but if you look at history, you see that the status quo has power when it's unchallenged. So these conversations about inequality are crucial.

As a Muslim woman, I'm all too familiar with the media shorthand for 'Muslim' and 'woman' equaling Covered in Black Muslim Woman. She's seen, never heard. Visible only in her invisibility under that black burka, niqab, chador, etc.

In general, the mass media tell us that black people are not loving, that our lives are so fraught with violence and aggression that we have no time to love.

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.

I come from a place where we feel like we're not represented in the national media.

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

You can't comfort the afflicted with afflicting the comfortable.

It seems, though, that historically we have now reached a position in which Jews cannot legitimately be understood always and only as presumptive victims.

Don't hate the media, become the media.

I am now using media as a tool to bring attention to marginalized people.

When someone lives as a minority, they experience the world differently than those of us who live in the majority. We may occupy the same physical space, but we don't occupy the same psychic space.

Something happened during the 1980s - perhaps the political climate of that time - that caused me to ask how a people would become part of a system that oppresses their own people.

There are people so alienated from the mainstream of American culture that it's like a parallel universe. They don't expect anything but trouble from the square world. Every time they interact with that world, they're given a ticket, sent to jail, drafted. It's never good. So they live by a separate value system.

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

The image of one country and its people amongst peoples of another country is largely created and sustained by the media.

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

Pakistanis are rarely introduced in popular media in any form except as a member of your friendly terrorist cell next door.

Civil rights activists and union activists shared not just common values and objectives but also common enemies.

The fights for media justice and racial justice have been intertwined since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

I was functioning in a time when people were struggling, and they knew they had to struggle, and I was a part of that struggle. It wasn't just women.

It is important to me to keep fighting for the rights of those who cannot.

Even before 'Pose,' I was involved in activism and advocating for my community in various ways. I didn't see that stopping with my entry into this industry, but people are going to be afraid of what you're going to say. I'm going to bump heads with people that benefit from the oppression that they put trans people through.

Deep in my heart, I care about social-justice warriors.