Historical Oppression Quotes

A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.

All whites benefitted from American slavery.

Right now, the Anglo people are desperately trying to hold on to the United States, like they tried to hold on to Africa.

It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African-American could not be a citizen of the United States.

Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.

Slavery was not born of racism; rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.

For people who have been slaves for 150 years doing all the work to be called lazy and shiftless by the man who was sitting on the porch—that is a phenomenon in itself.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.

I think 'Mudbound' reveals the interconnectiveness of our stories. You can't separate out threads of history and race as economic construct. 'Mudbound' makes it very plain. Race is about commerce; it's not an actual thing. It's a fiction that was created to basically divide resources unequally.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America. More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people. - Ta

Cinema has only been around for about 100 years. Has all of the world's violence towards women taken place only within the past 100 years?

The harsh fact of the matter is that this nation has not remotely come to grips with how many of its laws are rooted in slavery and bigoted oppression. After the Civil War, the United States never said, 'Let's examine every law and policy and system and structure we have to evaluate whether or not they were created as a tools of oppression.'

I was raised in Mississippi, in a family and a community that identified as black, and I have the stories and the experiences to go with it. One of my great-great grandfathers was killed by a gang of white Prohibition patrollers.

Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do.

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.

There is not a history of black intellectuals being allied with dominant forces to hold white people in social and cultural subordination for a few centuries. Second, the "our" of black folk has always been far more inclusive that the "our" of white folk. For instance, there would have hardly been a need for "black" churches if "white" churches had meant their "our" for everybody - and not just white folk. But "our" black churches have always been open to all who would join. The same with white society at every level.

You've already put more than enough energy into worry. That's all women have been allowed to do, historically.

Let it be said that when given a chance to complete the liberation of black Americans, on June 23, 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation - or, perhaps, a term of indefinite duration - of virtual enslavement to the past.

Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.

In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.

Throughout the ages, governments never failed to take advantage of anti-Semitism and the Jewish situation. While the Jews sought tolerance, they were met with intolerance, used as political and religious pawns, caught in the middle, which usually resulted in their becoming victims.

If you’re a black Christian, you have a real short memory.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

How many thousands of the subjects of Great Britain, at this moment labor under Civil disabilities, merely on account of their religious persuasions!