Clint Smith Quotes

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

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

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

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.

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

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

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

There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible - the new normal.

I think what we forget is that everybody loses when we keep unnecessary privilege. The cost to society overall is much greater.

The more that I learn about what's going on, it's really hard to ignore the oppression that people are actually going through.

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.

'An Octoroon' was written over about three years but premiered in 2014. I'm writing about America's relationship to its own history. Race or not, it's a story about suppression and oppression and many populations being devalued systematically.

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.

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.

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.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

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 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!

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Every social injustice is not only cruel, but it is economic waste.

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

Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.