Amandla Stenberg Quotes

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

The question is, What type of human do I want to be? How do I want to use my platform? Do I want to be safe, under the umbrella of my white privilege? Or do I want to push back and resist?

It's only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It's like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was - how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.

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

Some of the greatest social reformers of our time were wealthy.

The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power - and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor.

If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.

People don't want to have to justify their privileges; they don't want to have to justify having access to the power and resource that wealth brings. And by not talking about it, they are able to hold onto their power without being questioned, and I think that makes them feel more secure.

I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.

Everything I do has an underlying political question.

When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority—whether religious, racial, genetic, ethnic, cultural, or institutional—rather than an accident of timing or geography.

The sight of preventable evil is painful ... he who preaches patience and reliance upon natural progress is thought callous.

Those who are privileged have little regard for history.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

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.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.

Ferguson shows the power of social media. This could have not been a story. Or it could have just been a local story. Or it could have been something that we saw only from a distance, through the usual filters. Instead, it gathered steam.

Everybody wants to talk about black and white, when the situation is really about rich people against poor people.

I had the blessing of opportunity. You need the folks in the boardroom who have consciences and the people in the streets who can picket at the right time.

I've always thought that there are many things still left in society that are detached from the sense of ordinary people. I won't overlook them and I will determine what is right before taking bold action.

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

People with advantages don't tend to want to give them up. If you see it as a zero-sum game, then it will never change. If only the people who are disadvantaged speak out, then it's not enough. I don't want to overshadow their voices, but I want to support.

We need more courageous individuals who will defy the structures of power, whether political, economic, or intimate, but we also need it to be safe for people to feel their power and to be able to express their ideas and imagine without fear.