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Black Quotes

“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

“The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.”

Want Feels Ideas Real Black White Levels Accepting Class Middle Female Vote Organization Democratic Democrat Males Pursue Middle Class Voters Elites Working Class Affluent Tacit

Author:Ellen Willis

“Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor; those who struggle are middle class.”

Thinking Mind Different States Black Poor Accepting Class Poverty Struggle Middle Middle Class State Of Mind

Book:Sacred cows-- and other edibles

Source: Sacred cows-- and other edibles

“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”

Source: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

“There's no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there's no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can't solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender.”

“I don't want to know about the constitution of the rapist--I want to kill him! I don't care if he is white or black, if he is middle-class or poor, if his mother hung him from the clothesline by his balls: I only want to kill him! Any woman who has been raped will agree.”

Ifs Knows Want Has Beens Care Mother Black White Poor Class Middle Balls Constitution Agree Don't Care I Don't Care Middle Class Hung Clotheslines

Author:Diamanda Galas

“Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.”

Black Class Taken Middle Movement Oppression African American Middle Class Oppressed Black Women African American Women

Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”

“America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights movement and the developments in the '70s and '80s. We have witnessed a great expansion of the black middle class.”

“Actually we've had a black bourgeoisie or the makings of a black bourgeoisie for many more decades.In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the US has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable. What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.”

“It doesn't surprise me that aspect of the black nationalist movement, the cultural side, has triumphed because that is the aspect of the movement that was most commodifiable and when we look at the commodification of blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's very profitable and it's connection with the rise of a black middle class I think is very obvious.”

Thinking Looks Sides Black Class Middle Movement Aspect Connections Surprise Obvious Middle Class Phenomenon Profitable Blackness Surprise Me Commodification

Author:Angela Davis

“I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March.”

Thinking Men Kind Important Hands Black Class Millions Struggle Middle Example Acknowledge Rely Middle Class March Commodity

Author:Angela Davis

“The interesting thing about Georgia is, Atlanta is teeming with middle-class black people and black people with money - and yet there is still segregation.”

People Stills Black Interesting Class Middle Middle Class Black People Segregation Interesting Things Georgia Atlanta

Author:Richard Benjamin