Stephen J. Dubner Quotes

White male privilege remains alive in America, but the phrase would seem odd, if not infuriating, to a sixty-year-old man working as a Walmart greeter in southern Ohio.

You should always be prepared to win. But as much as I tell myself that, I've accepted another kind of role. Racism undercuts expectation, something like that. I'm not saying that to excuse myself from anything, but I've lived all this time, and things don't happen.

Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.

Nearly everyone I know seems to have a well-developed theory as to why this country is past redemption, or almost, and every theory seems almost right.

Mr. Trump, like too much of the church, offers little more than an excuse to project complex problems onto simple villains. Yet the white working class needs neither more finger-pointing nor more fiery sermons.

I think we've become blind in this country to the ways in which we've managed to reinvent a caste-like system here in the United States, one that functions in a manner that is as oppressive, in many respects, as the one that existed in South Africa under apartheid and that existed under Jim Crow here in the United States.

Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually stands between the poor and the real powers in this society - the administrative octopus with its head in Washington, the conglomerates, the military complex.

I could write a whole other book called 'I'm Judging You, America!' I still might.

It is a dark, unspoken truth that the powerful - the 'ruling class' - make up the rules as they go along.

It's an awful thing to be aware of your own corruption. I think a lot of people are bound by the particular economic system we work in to serve companies and masters who aren't really telling people what they're doing.

When it comes to politics today, the devils' not in the details; the devil's in the big picture, more often than not just hiding in plain sight.

Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.

We cannot pretend we do not have problems; we cannot pretend things are not wrong in our country. A lot of things are wrong.

Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

I think the traditional stereotypes are loaded in institutional racism.

Individual writers can certainly make a difference, but they are working within a system, an institution, that still holds tremendous power over whose voices are heard and whose voices are rewarded.

When the things in front of you in life reveal how messed up the system is, you lose faith in the system pretty quickly. You develop a contrarian attitude. Your instinct is to disagree with the status quo and then, if you can, to try and shake it up.

As long as you are in that white privilege bubble, you don't need to see the world differently. You don't need to see the world through the eyes of minorities or women.

I don't think the narrative I was stuck in - the 'black' designer category - was going to go away anytime soon.

I think so much of my life had me growing up under extreme poverty and really challenging conditions, with having the police in my neighborhood and seeing the impact of over-incarceration. Having a father love up on me and remind of who I was, and my strength against those conditions, really shaped why I'm an organizer today.

You have to know the forces that are against you and that are trying to break you down. We talk about the problems facing the black community: the decimation of the black family; the mass incarceration of the black man; we're talking about the brutality against black people from the police. The educational system.

There are a lot of things wrong with the country, and that doesn't mean America sucks. It means we should improve it.

Regardless of how much media coverage will be received, talking and raising awareness about social injustice isn't enough.

I shouldn't have to be preparing my children that the world is going to be unfair to them for the rest of their lives.

My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state - the system and the world - has on me.