Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

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.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

If you are on the wrong side of society you can’t win.

As a minority, no sooner do you learn to polish and cherish one chip on your shoulder than it's taken off you and swapped for another. The jewellery of your struggles is forever on loan, like the Koh-i-Noor diamond in the crown jewels.

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.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

I think that children are acutely sensitive to injustice because they live in a world that is absolutely filled with injustice. They have very, very little power, and they are extremely aware of power relations.

The structure of apartheid is still rooted in the Haitian society. When you have apartheid, you don't see those behind the walls. That is the reality of Haiti.

I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

Sometimes people who know our societies hate us worse that those who don’t… People who are our intellectual and educational equals feel humiliation even more so that the … peasant who is used to being downtrodden….

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

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of the half of society over which the other half has power—from the exercises of the right of the strongest.

All the households of the poor are not equally submissive

Brother! We have, as your friends, fought by your side, and have poured out our blood in your defense, but our arms are now broken. You have grown large. My people have become small, and there are none who take pity on them.

The trouble with discrimination is not discrimination per se, but rather that the people who are discriminated against think of themselves as second-class.

Resentment — that feeling when the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status and property ownership.

There are millions out there who aren't getting an even break. They're being done down.

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

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that's been discriminated against, knows what it's like.