Ruth Negga Quotes

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

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.

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

Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.

Power, privilege, and violence are not, and never were, strictly Southern issues in America.

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 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!

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

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

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

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

The Achilles' heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like 'systemic racism' and 'structural inequality.'

Racism has its boot squarely wedged on the neck of black communities, and we don't want to be told that hard work and responsibility are the answer.

This is an important thing: People who live in the mainstream and the status quo think that everyone else is there to serve them.

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.

Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so, obviously, it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don't ourselves experience.

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

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

It is always open season on Christian and on white folks because they are the group you can kick and you can get away with it. It is politically correct.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.

What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.

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

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

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