Discrimination & Prejudice Quotes

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Alexie, an American Indian, studied wrote about the phenomenon whereby the Indians who were brutalized and attacked by whites with modern weapons and other technological advantages, in the process of defending themselves and their way of life became oppressors to whites in many situations where they could dominate a local scene. Likewise, the Israelis, who were totally oppressed in the Middle East for years and dominated by the more numerous Arabs with over a dozen established national armies attacking the Jewish civilian population when Israel first became a state. However the Jews survived and each time the Arabs attacked and further oppressed the Israelis, the Jews became stronger until at some point the became oppressors of many of the Arabs. The oppressors became the oppressed and vica versa.


Vardaman, on of America’s worst racists, was one of the main drafters of that constitution. This is an example of why the Voting Rights Act was later needed to unravel a endemic system of keeping African Americans from voting or having any part in politics.


This is a very important historical quotation in that it shows the extensive degree of anti-Catholic prejudice that existed in America in the late 1930s. Most of the anti-Catholic feeling was based in the absurd but real belief of millions of Protestants that the Pope was trying to control America. Then there was the fear and that American Catholics would take political direction from the Vatican and the Catholic bishops. The perception of the Church was hundreds of years out of date. Most of the anti-Catholic bias reduced along with anti-Semitism in the remainder of the 20th century as Americans became much more religiously tolerant. By the 21st century, religious prejudice still existed but it was limited to a small group of Americans whose views were generally condemned by the American mainstream of thought and opinion.


Islam forbids homosexuality and Sharia (Islamic religious law) prescribes death as the penalty for homosexuality. At that time Iran was a Muslim theocracy and if there were overt homosexuality that was officially discovered, the heretics would be killed. The logic of the government was that since they had killed the homosexuals, there were none left. At the same time all the research showed that while Muslim homosexuality was slightly less than Christian, it was still quite significant in all Muslim cultures that had been studied. If the President was to be believed, Iran was the only exception.


Mehmet Talaat Pasha was one of the national leaders who adopted the policy of extermination of the Armenians. The Christian Armenians, a minority in Turkey and its lands, were discriminated against like other non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire. But during the Turkish War with Russia, some Armenians defected and served on the Russian side. Many Turkish citizens took revenge on Armenians by means of murder and torture. Soon, the extermination of the Armenians became the official “Young Turk” government policy.


Ford’s publication had printed a variety of virulent lies about Jews in general and Aaron Sapiro, a prominent Jew in particular. Shapiro sued for libel. Ford who had strong anti-Semitic views (See {586985}) tried to avoid testifying but could not. His attorneys then won a mistrial but Shapiro went to trial again. This time Ford wanted to settle and issued an apology as part of the settlement. In it he claimed that although the his publication had printed the Anti Semitic and libelous material, he knew nothing about the publications day-to-day operations and professed no animosity towards Jews. Most American Jews believed the apology sincere and knew very little of all of Ford’s anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi and fascist history. To this day it is unclear whether Ford knew the details about the virulent publications, or was a part of the writing and editorial policy and selection process, but his entire history indicates that the apology was more out of a desire to settle the lawsuit than to right a wrong.


The distrust and perception by many Muslims of non-Muslims is a practical and ethical problem. To many fundamentalist Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Animists—all non-Muslim Human Beings—are not only wrong but filthy and disgusting—in the same category as urine and feces. What is amazing however, that despite this paranoid view of ‘others’ Islamic nations have produced so many great physicians who compassionately have contact with impure non-believers every day. It also illustrates that most Muslims do not hold all the beliefs of their more fanatic co-religionists.


Prior to Johnson’s civil rights efforts, the South virtually always voted for Democrats in all elections. The only political competition was for the Democratic Party Primaries. The term “Solid South” meant that it was solid for the Democratic Party. But after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the racist whites who used to be Democrats switched and joined the genuine traditional conservative and created a Republican Southern majority that was as solid for the GOP as the Democrats had ever enjoyed.


There were almost no Blacks who agreed with him on this point. Nor do the vast majority of economists today. But Friedman believed that if there were no minimum wage scale, more lower wage workers would find jobs and learn skills to justify a higher wage later in their careers. To some extent, this used to be so for those occupations which require experience and/or apprenticeship. However, by the 21st century, people in minimum wage jobs can, from their jobs, rarely learn enough to economically justify a higher wage position. A minimum wage job became a dead end job for all but students and people in between other endeavors. Therefore the advocates of minimum wage argue that there should be a living wage so that as President Obama said, “No one should work full time, and not make enough to emerge from poverty.”


Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. This is an excellent example of political sarcasm. Read literally, this quotation indicates that he was opposed to women’s suffrage, and was a fairly extreme sexist. What he was doing however, is stating publicly the argument that many men made at the time—especially those who were not highly literate or well-educated. By stating the argument of the opposition, he allows fair minded people to be exposed to views that they might otherwise not be exposed to. Many sexist men at the time read the quotation and, not appreciating Twain’s sarcasm, concluded that Twain, unlike most of the “egghead intellectuals” of the day was an opponent of the increasingly militant feminists. In actuality, Mark Twain was a strong feminist. See {630191}, {630192}, & {630193}.