Jesmyn Ward Quotes

Our poor white people . . . are suffered to while away an existence in a state but one step in advance of the Indian of the forest.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Disenfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slaver's scars, I am the Red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same ole stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

Everywhere they are just alike, possess pretty much the same characteristics, the same vernacular, the same boorishness, and the same habits . . . everywhere, Poor White Trash.

The poor white Virginians are the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-Social whites of the South,

Outside of the oppressive nature that the South offered to the black people, black gay people, black gay people who happened to be Christian, who wouldn't want to leave? I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

The rich stick together; the poor and the marginalised are thrown together.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Sade's stuff is real deceptive. She's got stuff about prostitutes, poverty and people on the streets.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

What the poor did to the poor was the business of the poor, not the business of the proper people who ran the city.

Underneath the conservative popular base is the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. They exist outside the democratic process; their life is the most immediate and the most real need for ending intolerable conditions and institutions.

What our country really is, the home of oppression and injustice, a nightmare of misery, an inferno of suffering and human hell, a jungle of wild beasts.

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

Poverty is rooted in injustice.

And I feel like, as a black man within black culture, I know very well firsthand - as do my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents - we're used to things not going our way.