Shiva Ayyadurai Quotes

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

We don't take over the means of those whom we abhor.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.

As a minority, no sooner do you learn to polish and cherish one chip on your shoulder than it's taken off you and swapped for another. The jewellery of your struggles is forever on loan, like the Koh-i-Noor diamond in the crown jewels.

I value what I learned from being cast in the margins and what that felt like.

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.

The racism is so profound and the recognition - the kind of deep recognition that you have to humiliate. It's not about to killing or torture. It's to humiliate. So the oppressed feel degraded. And both the oppressed understand and the oppressors understand. It's constant.

If you have security, you can rebel; if you don't, you hold on to any scraps of it that you have.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

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.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

But you know, the system almost destroyed itself while it was goin' on trying to destroy us.

It's a struggle for every young Black man. You know how it is, only God can judge us.

In society, liberty for one may mean the suppression of liberty for others.

Why do you all push us around?

I'm an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.

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.

I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.