Nate Powell Quotes

The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

For a long time in the United States, in practice if not in principle, only white, male, Protestants were born free and equal.

I'm all for philosophical debates about race, but if you look at history, you see that the status quo has power when it's unchallenged. So these conversations about inequality are crucial.

Intersectionality is not easy. It's not as though the existing frameworks that we have - from our culture, our politics, or our law - automatically lead people to being conversant and literate in intersectionality.

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

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

History simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.

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.

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

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

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.

Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

You are exacerbating inequality rather than opening up opportunity.

For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world - for whites, anyway.

It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recognize both the structural and the cultural barriers that so many poor kids face. But I think that if you don't recognize both, you risk being heartless or condescending, and often both.

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.

I've always thought that there are many things still left in society that are detached from the sense of ordinary people. I won't overlook them and I will determine what is right before taking bold action.

A lot of people think that intersectionality is only about identity. But it's also about how race and gender are structured in particular workforces.

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.

In my life, I've been able to really examine society in a way most people who aren't outsiders don't get a chance to do.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

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.

Let's demonstrate, illustrate, the ways in which our communities are being undermined time and time again, and make sure that the broader public and those in power choose to stand with us.