Mike Colter Quotes

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

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

If any group wants to not be disenfranchised, then understanding that there's going to be a learning curve for people who have disenfranchised them is important.

All the excuses that people in power used to make for not telling diverse stories or including diverse people, they've proven to be false.

The further away you get from being a straight white man, the less freedoms you have to figure out who you are and negotiate what you mean to society.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

Intersectionality is not easy. It's not as though the existing frameworks that we have - from our culture, our politics, or our law - automatically lead people to being conversant and literate in intersectionality.

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.

It's not like a choice to have an identity politics discussion when you're living it all the time. And if it's uncomfortable, well then maybe the way that we need to deal with that is by letting things be uncomfortable.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.

Being born, especially being born a person of color, is a political act in itself.

I'm not a fan of identity politics.

The personal is political, but only to a point.

I can't discriminate? Oh, that's ripe, coming from a straight white man. What's the matter, baby doesn't feel like he belongs? Well why don't you try a place that was set up just for you? Like the world!

The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.

Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.

If you don't look like the ruling class, bring your inhaler.

Poor privileged white men. Their stranglehold on power is slowly being loosened.

White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

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