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Classism Quotes

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Classism Quotes

“Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared at these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything.”

ArtLiteratureCapitalismRadicalismClassismIntellectual Snobbery
Book:Normal People
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“There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, "namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You're oncommon small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar." "No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe." "Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I've seen letters––Ah! and from gentlefolks!––that I'll swear weren't wrote in print," said Joe. "I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's only that." "Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it son't, you must be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope!”

LyingEncouragementLearning ProcessClassismRealistic Expectations
Book:Great Expectations
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“All too often, students from nonmaterially privileged backgrounds assume a position of passivity—they be have as victims, as though they can only be acted upon against their will. Ultimately, they end up feeling they can only reject or accept the norms imposed upon them. This either/or often sets them up for disappointment and failure.”

TeachingStudentsPrivilegeVictimhoodPedagogyClassism
Book:Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
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“A Republican seizure of power based not on the strength of the party's ideas but on massive disfranchisement denies citizens not only their rights, but also the "talisman" of humanity that voting represents. The lie of voter fraud breaks a World War II veteran down into a simple, horrifying statement: "I wasn't a citizen no more." It forces a man, a retired engineer who was instrumental in building this nation, into facing a bitter truth: "I am not wanted in this state." It eviscerates the key sense of self-worthy in a disabled man who has to pen the painful words "My constitutional rights have been stripped from me." It maligns thousands of African Americans who resiliently weathered the Missouri cold and hours of bureaucratic runarounds as nothing but criminals and frauds. It leaves a woman suffering from lung cancer absolutely "distraught" and convinced that "they prevented us from voting," because none of her IDs could penetrate Wisconsin's law. It shatters the dying wish of a woman who, in her last moments on earth, wanted to cast a vote for possibly the first woman president of the United States. But an expired driver's license meant none of that was to be.”

PoliticsRacismAmerican HistoryUs HistoryClassismVoter Suppression
Book:One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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“Iowa congressman Steve King lamented the passing of "a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote." Florida congressional candidate Ted Yoho echoed that sentiment when he also proffered, "You used to have to be a property owner to vote." Of course, after the Great Recession, with African American homeownership lower than it had been during the 1930s and the lowest of all ethnic and racial groups in the United States, the implications of the GOP longings were obvious.”

RacismAmerican HistoryUs HistoryClassismVoter Suppression
Book:One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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“Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans. These discriminatory barriers were designed to encourage lower-class whites to retain a sense of superiority over blacks, making it far less likely that they would sustain interracial political alliances aimed at toppling the white elite.”

RacismSegregationUs HistoryClassism
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“The radical philosophy offered, for many African Americans, the most promise. It was predicated on a searing critique of large corporations, particularly railroads, and the wealthy elite in the North and South. The radicals of the late nineteenth century, who later formed the Populist Party, viewed the privileged classes as conspiring to keep poor whites and blacks locked into a subordinate political and economic position. For many African American voters, the Populist approach was preferable to the paternalism of liberals.”

Us HistoryPopulismClassism
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“Per a l'"Académie" barroca l'ortografia distingeix els lletrats dels ignorants... i de les dones... El desvelament del caràcter de les ortografies arbitràries com a reproductores de les relacions classistes/sexistes, com a causa de dualització social, com a enemigues de la cohesió social queda agudament, sarcàsticament enunciat per la veu d'Unamuno.”

SexismClassismMachismoOrthographyOrtografiaSexismeMasclismeClassisme
Author:Francesc Blanc i Canyelles
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“Her consciousness emerges within when the beast of the darkness allows them. This beast was a conjuration of the billion innocent souls lost to the structure of modernization. He was an archetype that transcended time and reality, a governing force as natural as nature itself, and yet this darkness was a new kind, born out of technology only apparent in the last few hundred years.”

Science FictionOppressionDystopianQuantum MechanicsPurgatoryClassismAlternate UniverseStructural Violence
Book:Wild Man: The Burnem story
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“To say that one goes on holiday is to speak the language of the working class, for whom the time off appears merry and playful; but to say one goes on vacation is to speak the language of the ruling class. Vacation comes from the same root as vacant and reflects what the owner sees when he looks around the floor—a vacancy where John 'should' 'be'. (I suspect that the owner probably thinks some negative thoughts about the Labor Unions and the 'damned Liberal' Government that force him to pay John even when John 'is vacant.') I leave it as a puzzle for the reader: Do the Irish and English speak Working Class in this case because they have had several socialist governments, or have the had several socialist governments because they learned to speak the language of the Working Class? And: has the U.S., alone among industrial nations, never had a socialist government because it speaks the Ruling Class language, or does it speak the Ruling Class language because it has never had a socialist government?”

LanguageClassismReprogrammingBrain SoftwareE Prime
Book:Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt
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“Everyone had gone to school with someone’s brother or known each other up at Cambridge. These were serious young leftist intellectuals, many of them communists devoted to the idea of a classless society, but they were also upper class and English and so almost unconsciously sought out others of their kind and mixed with them, while the working-class youth stood alone just outside the perimeter of this charmed circle, coming as close as he dared, barred from entry by an invisible boundary of accent.”

CommunismClassismLeftist Politics
Book:While England Sleeps
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“The goal of all the GOP voter ID laws is to reduce significantly the demographic and political impact of a growing share of the American electorate. To diminish the ability of black, Latinos, and Asians, as well as the poor and students to choose government representatives and the types of policies they support. Unfortunately, it's working.”

RacismAgeismClassismVoter SuppressionVoter Id Laws
Book:One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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“How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!”

WarHateFunPoorHistoryRichIgnoranceBooksForgottenMistakesBombsStarvingClassismUncaringCaveHistory Repeating ItselfAtomic
Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“By the late nineteenth century, as British cities teemed with new inhabitants, crime rates rose and more established residents came to be afflicted with a new, urban, and distinctly modern anxiety. For the middle and upper classes, it centered acutely on the protection of property, coalescing in particular around city dwellers who were not members of the bourgeoisie. These included the working class, the poor, new immigrants, and Jews, all of whom were viewed increasingly as agents of social contagion - a threat in urgent need of containment.”

HateFearRacismBiasClassism
Book:Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer
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“People say to me 'you're successful, what are you crying about?'. I'm crying about the people. I'm crying about their daughters. Our daughters, as one family. What good is it. What good is anything that everyone can't have. Every ism. They think we're done with racism. What about elitism, what about separatism, what about classism? That's all.”

PeopleThinkingDoneSuccessfulCryRacismDaughterOxfordOur DaughterIsmsElitismClassismOxford University
Author:Kanye West
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“I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.”

PeopleFeelsI CanWholeKidsTodayCareersCrazyConversationRacismCapitalismConnectedSexismFeedingSpectrumHomophobiaSavvyIntersectionalityClassism
Author:Kathleen Hanna
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“... nothing seems completely to differentiate the poor but poverty. We find no adjectives to fit them, as a whole, only those of which Want is the mother. "Miserable" covers many; "shabby" most, and I am sadly aware that, in a large majority of minds, "disagreeable" includes them all.”

WantMindWholeSeemsMotherPoorPovertyFitMajorityMiserableDisagreeableAdjectivesDifferentiateShabbyClassism
Book:Beauty for Ashes, by Albion Fellows Bacon; with Numerous Illustrations
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“A certain number of people have to live their lives outdoors between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and a certain number of people can only leave their homes between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. So basically, public life has to be lived in these shifts, in order for everyone to fit on the streets because there's just no more room for any more infrastructure, any more highways. So it polarizes the community into day people and night people, and it becomes sort of a metaphor for racism and classism.”

PeopleHomeNightCertainOrderCommunityRoomsNumbersStreetsFitRacismMetaphorHighwaysInfrastructurePublic LifeClassism
Author:Chuck Palahniuk
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“There are things about the South - the politics, the classism, the racism - that I hate, and I want to be here to fight those things. I don't want to be in California or Michigan just complaining about them. I'm here trying to make a difference in the way I can, writing about it. And I want younger people, especially kids from my community, to see that being successful doesn't have to mean leaving a place like this. You don't have to trade in your family or your sense of belonging for that.”

PeopleWritingTryingMeanKidsHateFightingCommunitySuccessfulRacismI HateTradeLeavingComplainingOur FamilyMaking A DifferenceBeing SuccessfulBelongingI Want YouClassism
Author:Jesmyn Ward
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“Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.”

Has BeensRealCountryCareChristianPoorConsciousnessAttitudeIssuesGroupsRacismPrejudiceTransformationSlaveryBelieverImmigrationHealth CareMinoritiesEchoesConsumerismDominantRevealingWorldviewClassism
Author:Richard Rohr
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“The struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.”

EndsHelpingFormFightingIndividualEffortStruggleGroupsRacismBasesOppressionLiberationSexismDestroyingDominationSexistClassism
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
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“Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice”

Has BeensOrderIndividualNaturalResultsAcceptingVisionViolenceShareChildhoodTaughtRevolutionProfoundClimate ChangeInjusticeActiveContraryOppressionRejectionGlobal WarmingEthicalVeganNonviolencePassiveRefusalVeganismParadigmNatural OrderClassismFrancione
Author:Gary L. Francione
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“So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an "evil doer.”

PeopleWayPersonsMatterUseRememberEvilEasyPresidentWaterAnimalAirProductsNormalEatingDrinkingClimate ChangeFleshBreathingGlobal WarmingVeganismLeatherSilkDoersDairyDrinking WaterAmerican PresidentWoolJudgementalClassismFrancioneEvil DoersNon Judgemental
Author:Gary L. Francione
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