Opal Tometi Quotes

Keeping people on the margins of cultural, social and political life constitutes in many nations one of the most glaring injustices of our time.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

We deserve to live in a world where there's no impunity, but beyond this question of impunity, there are all these structures that are actually doing a disservice to our people.

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

Disenfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white.

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.

Will the American People Never Cease to Oppress and Torture the Helpless poor?

The more that I learn about what's going on, it's really hard to ignore the oppression that people are actually going through.

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

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

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

It's easier to blame the person with less power.

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

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.

I do think that this planet is a totally unjust planet. I mean throughout history - history paints a beautiful picture when it's written by the victorious, but it's a planet that belongs to the strong and the more able, and usually they are tyrants. So basically, I don't see justice happening to the crushed and the weak.

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

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

I've been in revolt for years against ignominy, against injustice, against inequality, against immorality, against the exploitation of human beings.