Maysoon Zayid Quotes

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

Sometimes, you feel like, 'Am I going to be upset about this as a black person or as a woman first? Or am I gonna be both?' Because some things inherently affect black women; some things affect you as a woman and not a black person; and some things just affect you as a black person.

Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

As a black woman of trans experience, my position in this society leaves me really no choice but to stand for the intersectional identities I hold.

As a gay person, I'm used to speaking on gay issues. As a black person, I'm used to speaking on black issues.

I'm a brown-skinned Indian immigrant, low-caste untouchable - I don't know how many labels you want to put on me - who's fought all his life.

It's not new to attempt to vilify the minority that speaks about their oppression. That's not a new thing.

When you're in the minority, it doesn't matter what you're agenda is, you're not going to have the degree of freedom that you have as a member of the majority.

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

I'm always very proud of belonging to three minorities: gay, Jewish, white South African.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.

In today's Britain, the weakest among us are often assumed to be minority communities. In fact, the weakest are those minorities-within-minorities for whom the legal right to exit from their communities' constraints amounts to nothing before the enforcement of cultural and religious shaming.

To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist.

Our nation's long neglect of minorities whose skin is dark is perhaps only a little worse than our neglect of another minority whose hair is white.

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.

It's always going to be a fight for anyone who isn't an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn't have a fight.

We live in a society that has a long history of not valuing people of color or women.

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 have different privileges because I am a man, and I have to acknowledge that and realize that another person of color who is also a woman is having a different experience than I am.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

That is just the reality of being a marginalized person in this country: you have to deal with the psychological impact of your oppressor - whether that's being a woman dealing with men or gay people dealing with straight people or trans people dealing with everybody else.

At first, I didn't even realize how low on the totem pole I am. First of all, I'm a woman. Second of all, I'm of color. Third of all, I'm queer.

Women are a minority the same way gay people are.

This idea of, oh, poor little black person, oh, poor little poor person, oh, poor little woman, oh, poor little indigenous person - everybody's a poor little something! I don't try and please everybody.