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Institutional Oppression Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Institutional Oppression.

Institutional Oppression Quotes

“Kindness is not just the absence of being mean or hateful. Being kind entails actively resisting actions, ideas, and institutions that rob others of dignity.”

KindnessRespectDignitySocial JusticeHuman DignityInstitutional RacismInstitutional OppressionInstitutional Abuse
Book:In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World
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“Many DEI trainings and narratives have indeed enabled or produced types of people who seem to be looking for excuses to be offended and to construe, sometimes genuine human slips, as intentional micro and macro aggressions. Even worse, the way things have been done has resulted in people who are quick to play identity cards anytime they are confronted with totally unrelated matters like being incompetent in doing their work or other unrelated professional and personal matters. I am in no way condoning or denying the existence of racism, sexism, and countless other forms of exclusions, marginalization, and even violence against so many vulnerable groups and individuals, but I also can’t in good faith ignore the darker side of this coin. For one side to be true, it doesn’t negate the other darker side. In many workplaces and university campuses, we have armies of people who overuse and even abuse the language of ‘feeling violated’ over things like someone mistakenly not referring to them as “they,” but they remain completely silent and unmoved by countless injustices on campus or at work, let alone about atrocities and genocides in the outside world. We have a type that wastes so much time giving themselves and others the ‘permission’ to indulge in selfish acts of complicity, indifference, and silence under the guise of ‘self-care.’ [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

DiversityRacismElitesEquityDiversity And InclusionMisinformationEquity And InclusionRuling ClassInstitutional Oppression
Author:Louis Yako
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“Many DEI officers/professionals I have spoken to over the years have confirmed to me that they don’t feel they have any power to change the structures of the workplaces in which they work. They are given just enough power – along with a fancy job title – to appear as though they are making changes, but once and if they dare to confront real problems, they are often replaced or disciplined by the privileged whites who remain at the top of every institution and organization. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

PowerRacismSocial JusticeElitesWhite SupremacyDiversity And InclusionInstitutional RacismDivide And ConquerEquity And InclusionInstitutional Oppression
Author:Louis Yako
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“In the end, we are left with this painful conundrum: we only need DEI initiatives because we don’t truly have a society that values diversity, we don’t have equitable workplaces and communities, and we don’t practice inclusion in the deep sense of the word. The day we have them weaved into the fabric of our human awareness is the day the need for such initiatives will cease to exist. Yet, to forcefully do away with DEI is a way to forcefully govern, discipline, and put each marginalized body and group of people in their right place – a place of servitude – through a culture of fear and terror spread by the privileged white oligarchs at the top. This is precisely why silence and retreat are much costlier than resisting not only what is being done to DEI, but how DEI has been done all along. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

RacismWhite SupremacyDiversity And InclusionCorporate GovernanceInstitutional RacismEquity And InclusionInstitutional OppressionInstitutionalized Racism
Author:Louis Yako
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“Within the mental-health system in North America, the borderline victim of severe childhood trauma is usually blamed for her behaviour, which is regarded as having no legitimate basis and being self-indulgent; her trauma history is ignored and not talked about; and she is given as little treatment and follow-up as possible. At St Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, many staff members expressed the opinion, in my presence, that borderlines and multiple personality disorder patients did not have a legitimate right to in-patient treatment, and the out-patient department would not accept patients with either diagnosis. (1995)”

Mental Health StigmaBorderline Personality DisorderTransferenceMental Health ProfessionalsMental Health BiasPersonality DisorderInstitutional OppressionMental Health SystemMental Illness DiscriminationLabellingCountertransferenceMental Health DiscriminationMental Illnesss Stigma
Book:Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment
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“We should be judging the effectiveness and value of any of our solutions by how well they'd work for people with the least institutional power. Aside from idealism, it's pragmatic—if marginalized users are the people being targeted the most and being targeted the worst, then designing solutions that focus on the majority and treat the marginalized users as edge cases is not logically sound, because they aren't. Conversely, there's no reason to assume that the solutions that work for the people who need it most wouldn't also work for people who aren't as much at risk.”

IntersectionalityMale PrivilegeMarginalizationOnline AbuseInstitutional OppressionSystemic FailureMarginalized PeopleInternet AbuseIgnoring Outside VoicesSystematic Oppression
Book:Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate
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“In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned land stretching back to the antebellum period. The series documented some 406 victims and 24,000 acres of land values at tends of millions of dollars. The land was taken through means ranging from legal chicanery to terrorism.”

American HistoryBlack HistoryUs HistoryKleptocracyInstitutional OppressionInstitutionalized RacismLand Ownership2001Slave Economy
Book:Un conto ancora aperto
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“Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime.”

PrejudiceHuman RightsCivil RightsInstitutional OppressionInstitutional Abuse
Book:Native Son
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“Same-sex marriage has not created problems for religious institutions; religious institutions have created problems for same-sex marriage.”

ReligionRelationshipsChurchMarriageGayInstitutionsLgbtCatholicismLgbtqMarriage QuotesGay MarriageCatholic ChurchLesbianGay RightsRelationships QuotesBisexualLgbt QuotesLgbt RightsBisexualityThe ChurchSame Sex MarriageSame Sex LoveInstitutional OppressionBisexual IssuesSame Sex RelationshipsSame Sex MarriagesLesbian PartnersDefense Of Marriage
Author:DaShanne Stokes
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“Failing to notice a lack of Latino and African-American representation in congress is a result of systemic oppression – racism. General indifference to the fact that white men dominate large corporations is part of the invisibility of both racism and sexism. A lack of concern about the plight of a “breeding” sow on a factory farm is also a result of normative systematic oppression – speciesism.”

RacismSexismIntersectionalityFactory FarmingSpeciesismSowPigSystemic OppressionInstitutional Oppression
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“Without the voices from the edges publicly demanding, wailing, and protesting, institutions and systems that engage in exclusionary, oppressive, or marginalizing practices continue to operate with apathy or impunity. Destructive systems do not change themselves, and those working for change within these systems can’t do it alone.”

KindnessRacismSocial JusticeActivismProtestRacism In AmericaInstitutional OppressionSocial UnrestInstitutional Change
Book:In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World
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