Edmund Phelps Quotes

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women.

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work.

If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.

All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they're in the same boat. They've got no economic opportunities.

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

The people who suffer in the Obama economy have been young people, African Americans, Hispanics, single moms.

I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.

In Egypt, where my research is focused, I have seen plenty of trouble in and out of the citadel. There are legions of young men who can't afford to get married, because marriage has become a very expensive proposition. They are expected to bear the burden of costs in married life, but they can't find jobs.

The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers.

Almost half of the Black young men in America are not employed. There are not that many lazy people in the entire country..

You know, women not making dollar for dollar the same as a man is not new. It's been that way since day zero, since the founding of this country. And when you put African-American women and Hispanic women into the mix it's even worse than that.

We had particular policies in this country that resulted in the larger share of poverty that we have in African-American communities.

Since 1980, Republican shredding of the social safety net has disproportionately hit women, particularly women of colour.

We are not generally included in that narrative - people of color - definitely, women of color don't normally fit that narrative that has been built around the whole image and the whole story of the Silicon Valley.

To be American in the United States means to be white, protestant, and very rich. This excludes almost entirely black people and anyone else who can be easily identified.

The poor are the Negroes of Europe.

... if the United States is indeed the great melting pot, the Negro either didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

If this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-American didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

Among poor people, there's not any question about women being strong -- even stronger than men -- they work in the fields right along with the men. When your survival is at stake, you don't have these questions about yourself like middle-class women do.

The Negro is the same as any other minority group he is clannish and tends to select neighbors who are of the same background and race. Unless other builders opened housing to all, I could not afford the decline in sales that would result if Negroes enjoyed equal access to my houses.

One third of African American males are destined to be in prison sometime in their lifetime.

The children of those people [long term unemployed] have less education, earn less, have higher unemployment. The problems are visited upon the children