Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

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.

My whiteness, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, family support, and so many other factors shield me from some of the worst possible consequences - often fatal ones - that result from the toxic combination of misogyny, racism, and anti-trans sentiment.

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

I'm not a fan of identity politics.

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!

There's this false notion that you have to separate and choose between issues of class and issues of race. What people do when they say that you need to separate class from race is that they are really just saying that people of color should come second.

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.

I'm a straight white man - I have options, and I'm not blocked on a consistent basis when I wake up in the morning because of my race, sex, and orientation.

Because I was assigned female at birth and I am light-skinned, white, I think people hear my message more than they hear it from someone who was assigned male at birth and is a person of colour.

While white women and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination. Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated privilege that is often hard to see.

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or ... and oppression of others.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

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

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

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.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

I resent anyone coming in and claiming to be a minority as I am.

Nobody calls on black women to find out what they're thinking about because we're always part of somebody else's agenda.

Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender - and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.

Race affects everything that I do, and everything that I create speaks to intersectionality.

I think that because human difference for so long, in all its various forms, has been the root of so much oppression, sometimes there's the impulse to say let's deny the difference, as though by wishing away the difference we can then wish away the oppression.

Freedom in America was not always flat. Racism made it un-flat, so that some people had privileges over other people.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that's been discriminated against, knows what it's like.