Mark Bradford Quotes

Segregation by race has declined gradually since 1970, but separation by income has grown steadily in the same period.

There are two Baltimores. There are clearly two Baltimores.

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they'd otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.

I find the aristocratic parts of London so unattractive and angular; the architecture is so white and gated. But in New York, it's different - even uptown it's really grand, and there's no real segregation there. It's all mixed up.

Johannesburg is weird, because half of it is like Los Angeles. It feels like just wealthy parts of L.A. But half of it is severe slummy, something like Rio De Janiero or something. So it's kind of weird, because it's both happening at the same time.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.

There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.

I have always thought that the rapid economic development of South Africa would in the long run prove to be incompatible with the government's racial policies, and recent events have tended to confirm my opinion.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.

American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking.

South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation.

You can't define what's middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor.

There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.

I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt about being just 'regular poor,' not 'poor, poor.'

Los Angeles cannot permanently exist as two cities—one amazingly prosperous, the other increasingly poorer in substance and in hope.... This city, like the nation, is living with an increasing polarization of incomes. A rising tide no longer lifts all boats.

Poverty divide not only nations but societies within nations.

... popular art has no chance of a healthy life, or, indeed, of a life at all, till we are on the way to fill up this terrible gulf between riches and poverty.

Inequality is now determined more about where you live than the class you belong to.

Suburban subdivisions encouraged buyers to live with their “own kind,” constantly sorting people by religion, ethnicity, race, and class.

L.A. is a town built upon segregated, individual fantasies.