Roxane Gay Quotes

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

Now we just showin' and provin' that there's a ghetto everywhere you go.

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

The Tea Party people say they're angry about socialism, but maybe they're really angry about capitalism. If there's a sense of being looked down upon, it's that sense of failure that's built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers.

The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help. The wealthy have weak incentives to get the right amount of the right thing to those who need it; the poor are in no position to complain if they don’t.

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.

A meritocracy increases inequality --- by its very nature, it has to.

The poor developed an envy and an extreme jealousy, born of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and contempt.

It's always been a subtext of our secular optimism that you solve the economic problem, and all other things sort of take care of themselves. Well, we seem to be doing well on the economic side - we are doing very well - and the other things are not solving - they're compounding.

I have different privileges because I am a man, and I have to acknowledge that and realize that another person of color who is also a woman is having a different experience than I am.

I am Hindu, upper-caste, male, and able-bodied. So everything is on my side. That gives me the extra cushion that Swara Bhaskar won't get.

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

I have a class prejudice - against the upper class, which is foolish.

the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

Inequality is inextricably linked with distribution of land and natural resources.

In practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.

We look around at our national politicians, we do not see national politicians who are without fault. And, actually, we see quite a lot who get very far - let's take Boris Johnson- with considerable. White. Privilege. Failure after failure after failure rewarded.

When the #MeToo movement started and went viral, it was everyday people all around the world. The fact that the stories continue to be about famous white women has everything to do with who the media places attention on.

I'm fortunate enough that my dad was well-off, my family was well-off, so we're able to go to private schools and stuff like that.

I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.

A girl born in Drumchapel in Glasgow has just as much right to good health and the opportunities provided by a good education as a Surrey stockbroker's son.

Racism is just the symptom, but the fight is economic.

But I think most importantly, we need to realize that not everyone is privileged or born into a good life, stable homes or a home, period.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.