Dee Rees Quotes

Our criminal justice system affirmatively depends on inequality.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

We do not yet have justice, equal and practical, for the poor, for the members of minority groups, for the criminally accused, for the displaced persons of the technological revolution, for alienated youth, for the urban masses, for the unrepresented consumer – for all … who do not partake of the abundance of American life.

Segregation results inevitably in discrimination and inferior treatment

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

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

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

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Inequality doesn't create unhappiness.

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

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

When you allow racial disparity and institutional inequity to affect one part of the country, eventually it's coming back to get everyone.

If he presents himself to vote, he runs a risk to his life. Oppressed, he can complain, but if he finds only whites among his judges… His son is excluded from the school where the descendants of Europeans come to be instructed. In theaters he cannot buy for the price of gold the right to be placed at the side of one who was his master; in hospitals he lies apart. The black is permitted to beseech the same God as whites, but not to pray to him at the same alter.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

You are exacerbating inequality rather than opening up opportunity.

I hate systemic oppression in America.

I don't think I know a single person who's a minority who hasn't experienced some form of discrimination at one time or another.

The same way I'm not afraid of calling out systemic discrimination, I'm also not afraid of calling out inequality and the fact that inequality is growing in society and that affects everybody, regardless of race.

I just have this thing about injustice. Everybody hates the big injustices - I know. But I hate even the little injustices, even the way a salesclerk treats somebody who is shabbily dressed and happens to go into a nice store.

There are so many people out there struggling with racism, or their sexuality or where they're brought up or how wealthy their family was ans these issues are not hidden, they were in the late 19 century and they're still important today.

Separate but equal is a fraud.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

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.

Let's leave beside them in another pile all the injustices which exist in the northern state.