George Melville Weston Quotes

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.

I think the biggest problem in the world is that we have a generation of young people, and maybe two, who don't think it's going to get any better.

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.

There's prejudice and poverty in Hungary as there is in every country.

We love wealth, and we hate poor people. I know people who work in TV news who have actually been told to do stand-ups rather than put interviews with poor people on the air. We physically don't want to look at them.

Where educational deprivation exists, it breeds conflict and enables repression.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

... rich white leaders of the American South defeated populism in the late 19th century, by persuading poor Whites to hate poor Blacks.

In the combat between the emerging Negroes of the South and the ruling white trash, I sympathize greatly with the Negro.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

In the South the white men used to call all Black men “boy” until they got to be old enough to call them “uncle.” It was sex-the feat of sexual competition. When they used to get liquored up and talk they would always say, “The schoolroom leads to the bedroom” to justify school segregation.

Poor whites have been pitted against poor blacks to assuage the conscience of the affluent.

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slaver's scars, I am the Red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same ole stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

What's going to be a hundred years from now ain't much account to us.... The whites has the lands and the sense, an' the blacks has nothin' but their freedom, an' it's jest like a dream to them.

One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.

Even its children know that the South is in trouble.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the mean duties... It constitutes the very mudsills of society...Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to the purpose...We use them for that purpose and call them slave.