Oppressed Communities Quotes

My story is one of millions, and the others aren't often told.

Riots are the voices of the unheard.

I'm always drawn to the underdogs, to the people whose stories don't get told.

You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn't fundamentally changed the structure of their societies.

The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.

I may have no idea what I'm talking about," I said, a little ticked off now. "But we're all a part of a minority waiting for a majority to pull their heads out of their asses.

I'm a Third World person. I grew up in an occupied zone [Greenville, South Carolina] and had to negotiate with the superpower, really the colonial power.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.

The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.

The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.… If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

God says, "Come out of her my people, that you be not partakers of her sins and her plagues, for her sins have reached unto heaven." We don't need the Democratic Party. We don't need the Republican Party. We can get a little from both of them, but Elijah Muhammad said we need to form our own political machine.! A machine that works for the oppressed: The oppressed Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White.

Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read

White Americans must be made to understand the basic motives underlying Negro demonstrations. Many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations are boiling inside the Negro, and he must release them. It is not a threat but a fact of history that if an oppressed people's pent-up emotions are not nonviolently released, they will be violently released.

I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth.

The anger that you see expressed out there in Los Angeles, in my district this evening, is a righteous anger, and it's difficult for me to say to the people, "Don't be angry." When people are angry and enraged, they do do senseless things. They do act even sometimes out of character, and that's why it is the responsibility of America to try and avoid putting people in these kinds of situations.

"Marginalized others" have access to other ways of knowing, and therefore to deeper, more authentic truths about human reality. They can share that knowledge by speaking about their lived experience while in a safe space. But to provide this kind of safety, members of privileged groups, i.e. white, able-bodied, cis-gendered middle class men, must keep quiet.

It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people.

Our struggle does not end so long as there is a single human being considered untouchable on account of his birth.

A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

My Swaraj takes note of bhangis, dheds, dublas and the weakest of the weak, and except the spinning wheel I know no other thing which befriends all these.

Hindu-Muslim unity, khaddar and removal of untouchability are to me the foundation of Swaraj.

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?