Cherrie Moraga Quotes

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

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

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

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

Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

Whenever there are enclosing walls, there are abuses behind them.

We have a tendency in life to be afraid of our oppressors.

There is a great fear of our Union -- a fear that I do not fully understand, but that I know is present...What is it that causes some men to act so hastily and so cruelly? It cannot be that we are so powerful. Is it so much to ask that the poorest people of the land have a measure of justice?

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.

Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.

We need to start looking at some of the root causes of division. And one of the reasons why people are exploited to hate, to fear others is that people are afraid in their own lives.

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

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

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.

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

All oppression creates a state of war.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.

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!

Why do you all push us around?

Like one of any minority, I have experienced prejudice.

Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.