Tim Wise Quotes

It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us, 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'

I don't know why people like being oppressed.

If your white privilege and class privilege protects you, then you have an obligation to use that privilege to take stands that work to end the injustice that grants that privilege in the first place.

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

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

We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world.

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.

White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

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

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Many of the ideas that accompany privilege talk, if implemented, would wreak havoc on human wellbeing. If people truly acknowledged their privilege, they would show a greater concern for the forces behind it, which permit them to lead long, healthy, educated, leisure-filled lives, all the while incessantly complaining about the unadulterated evils of modern civilization.

I don't hear women who are less privileged thinking they're entitled to everything, whenever they want it. That's a privilege phenomenon, but it is a phenomenon.

The point of privilege and the notion of mansplaining is that sometimes I definitely feel like I should shut up. That's it functioning. That's the notion of privilege functioning.

People who have no stake in society are the least likely to have respect for it.

Feeling trapped in identity isn't just the purview of women and minorities.

What you must understand is oppression does not end with the niggers. It does not end with the poor people, it doesn't end with the women, or the pregnant women. It goes on up the line to the executive who has his bag searched in the airport.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

It's usually human drama that carries with it issues of race or class that attracts me. That was certainly the case with 'No Crossover.'

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

There had always been black people in and out of our house, and from the outset I had been taught that for them life was defined by struggle and filled with injustice.

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

People don't want to have to justify their privileges; they don't want to have to justify having access to the power and resource that wealth brings. And by not talking about it, they are able to hold onto their power without being questioned, and I think that makes them feel more secure.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

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.