Systemic Disadvantage Quotes

What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.

Stuff Happens.’ That’s the G-rated version. That’s a bumper sticker that only a straight white upper middle class male could have made. Because anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who isn’t male, anyone who isn’t white, anyone who isn’t upper middle class knows that stuff doesn’t just happen. Stuff gets done by people to people. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is random. This isn’t osmosis. And so we act as if it’s this passive thing, but yet that’s not the case.

When we foster an economy without hope, we guarantee that a segment of our population will be destined to know homelessness on a permanent basis, and not for the one night I voluntarily spent at a shelter.

We live in a country [USA] where the belief is that anyone can succeed, but for so many here, and for the majority of the world, that's not the case. In many parts of the world, women and poor people are at a huge disadvantage - certain rights and protections don't exist, and they don't have the chance of upward mobility.

Poverty is not a trait of character. It is created anew in each generation but not by heredity, by circumstances.

No child's future should ever be dictated by what zip code they were born in.

Problems of persistent poverty cannot be addressed unless they are acknowledged.

Poor people aren't making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they're living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.

I feel bad for the kids that are in school right now and the young people all across America who don't realize that the grownups who are supposed to be running this country are the verge of leaving them as the first generation of Americans worse off than the generation before.

There are so many people who've come before me who deserved to be tired. Who didn't have the opportunities, who didn't have the access, who didn't have the money, who didn't have the influence, who didn't have the voice.

The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse. What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.

We should not think of poverty eradication as a matter of collecting money and giving it to the poor so much as of reforming the global rules that are disadvantaging the poor and making it impossible for them to fend for themselves.

It's as if women are in a totally rigged race. A lot of men are driving souped-up, low-slung racing cars and we're running as fast as we can in tennis shoes we managed to salvage from a local garage sale.

It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand ... no method by which the communities could translate their desires for those individuals into provision for those individuals.

Despite media stereotypes, the majority of women who go on welfare did not choose to. They have been abandoned by the men to whom they have entrusted their economic well-being.

‎It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

I am not an economic determinist. If I were, I would throw up my hands; I just would not bother. I think it's wrong to be an economic determinist. I think it's wrong to simply say, "Well, inevitably, if you're poor, you're going to get a lousy education; if you're lower-middle class, the cards are going to be stacked against you, and you'll probably never get anywhere".

I do not at all wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries, that what used to be called the ‘submerged tenth’ can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level…

The terror of the ordinary is what keeps many affluent, educated parents and their kids out of the merely 'decent' schools, the ones that are simply 'fine.'

There's not enough opportunity, and I feel like you can't control where you're born or where you're brought up.

I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state.

When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior.

There is an elaborate safety net with the usual holes.

Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

You grow up Latin in this country and you're a third class citizen from the word go, and so you have to deal with everything around you from that point of view and trying to feel entitled.