Class
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- Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] had many other goals - many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals. Goals that apply to white people too. Like ending poverty, reducing the war aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200
years of racial terrorism by getting black people to confront their fears... That is what Dr. King did. Not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them - like Gandhi did in India - to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives. Once the beating was over, we were free. - Putting women’s traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It’s the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.
- The mayor of Sochi is now saying that there are no gay people in Sochi. So the only thing that is flaming over there now is the Olympic torch.
- I thought since I'm a knight - I'm a literal knight of the kingdom of Norway - I would get on my horse and charge forth in her defense.
- People will often say, 'Why are you talking about feminism? Why aren't you talking about human rights?' And yes, but we're talking about [women] because there is a group of people in the world who fought for centuries, who have been systematically deprived of rights because they were women. So that's why we talk about women. That's why it has to be about women. Because those are the people whose rights have been taken away. And we can't somehow pretend, 'Oh, let's talk about the human race,' and make things all wishy washy. No, it's women. It has to be women. It has to be feminism. And you have to become one.
- Depicting the pope as a sort of Superman, a star, is offensive to me…the pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly, and has friends like everyone else. A normal person.
- On the first day, God created the navy blue blazer with brass buttons and khakis. And I looked and saw that it was not good. On the second day, He made the ill-fitting all-black suit. And I looked and saw that it was kinda bland. On the third day he created the boxy grey suit -- and things were starting to get bleak. On the fourth day, I cried. The hunt for my bar mitzvah suit was failing miserably.
- In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market. Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap…
- 50 years later we need to have a conversation…not just about civil rights, C-I-V-I-L, but about silver rights, S-I-L-V-E-R. That is to say: economic rights, economic freedoms. Black folk lag behind in every leading economic category 50 years later, even in the Obama era. And the bottom line is this: if you don’t have economic freedom, you really ain’t free.
- The huge thing about mental health treatment and mental health care is that you’re encouraged to suck things up and deal…There’s a lot of attention on injury or physical problems, but when they’re invisible wounds or mental health issues, then it’s a personal issue.
- Prostitution thrives in the United States. We focus in this country on punishing the girls. For every brothel owner or pimp or male customer, there are 50 girls who are arrested for being prostitutes. Other countries have tried the other way around, and it works beautifully…they bring the charges against the brothel owners and the pimps and the male customers, and they do not prosecute the girls, who quite often are brought into that trade involuntarily. It works quite well, by the way.
- Calling a white male 'privileged' in a country with such a clear history and continuing pattern of preference for white males is about as wrong as calling a rich person 'advantaged' in a capitalist society. The word privilege isn’t a negative judgment about [Tal] Fortgang or his character, but simply a recognition that our society’s institutionalized racism and sexism isn’t aimed at white males.