Nelson Mandela Quotes

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.

I do not believe that the colour of one's skin determines whether you are disadvantaged.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval of affirmative action.… We have to prove ourselves and we have to work hard doing it.

In America, many marginally competent or flatly incompetent whites are hired every day -some because their white skin suits the conscious or unconscious racial preference of their employers. The white children of alumni are often grandfathered into elite universities in what can only be seen as a residual benefit of historic white privilege.

It's kind of almost not fair that certain people don't get the opportunities that others get just because of where they are born or where they were brought up.

We have never had a society that was truly just. Some groups have always benefited at the expense of others.

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world

Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

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

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful.

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

All the grand work was laid for people who came after me. The Supreme Court decided not to give it to me, so they gave it to two white guys. I think that's what they were waiting for.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.

Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

This is a hard job to do …. We represent the underdog, and that makes the top dogs angry.

It's them that take advantage that get advantage in this world.