Inequity Quotes

Hello, glad to be here, but just don't expect to get from me what you will never get from me. You will not get from me big, glad news…no, things are going pretty bad, I think." - @ Creative Time Summit 4: Confronting Inequity ~ Slavoj Zizek

I hate injustice, I despise inequity, I condemn hypocrisy, I abhor the lack of reason. ~ Alexander Theroux

The Grand Mistake in Education - To think that what's right for you is right for everyone. IT AIN'T. The Fly in this Ointment!http://youtu.be/6HpXUaQGY8I via @youtube ~ Alan Share

Even if, personally, I'm in a place of contentment or solidity, I feel like it's hard not to look out into American culture and see vast inequity, widespread institutionalized violence and racism and transphobia and environmental destruction. It's hard to be in this world and feel a sense of innate satisfaction at all. There's plenty of things to feel unsettled about. ~ Carrie Brownstein

Whether you're gay or straight, with a physical disability, your skin's a different color, it's absurd in this age to not be aware and be concerned of the inequity in rights. ~ Carson Kressley

Logic has never been idealism's strong suit. Every time I'd pointed out some inequity in our realtionship to Joe, something as basic as who had first dibs on the car, he said, "What are you going to do? Call NOW?" as he drove away, laughing. He thought the National Organization of Women was a joke, and feminism itself hysterically funny. It wasn't funny. It was nothing less than self-determination. It's what, in the end, we were all after. Me, Margo, Howie, Joe. We wanted equality. We wanted justice. We wanted not to be controlled by the world as it was. ~ JoeAnn Hart

Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society. It is even more irrational to believe that it is whites who are at the receiving end of discrimination. Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy. ~ Robin DiAngelo

America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs. ~ George Saunders

As a country [USA], we can attract more talented people to teaching by raising awareness of educational inequity and getting the public to understand from individual classrooms, schools, and cities that this is an issue that can be solved. ~ Wendy Kopp

Later, Bishop Crandall dropped by
The house to give me a stern
reprimand. He sat across
the cluttered table,

playing with a paper clip.
'Your parents are worries about you, Pattyn.'

I was worried about myself.
But I wasn't about to let him
know it. "Really?"

'Really. What have you got to say for yourself? You've always been such a good girl.'

Good girl. Sit. Stay. Fetch.
Bristles rose up along my
spine. "Define good."

'I don't appreciate your attitude,
Pattyn. Fast and pray. Search your
soul for the inequities in your life.'

"Any inequity in my life
began when I was born
female. Can you fix that?"

'You'll have to fix that yourself,
by concentrating on the things
God expects of you.'

His two-faced rhetoric
was pissing me off. "You
mean like kissing your ass?"

He slammed his hand on the table.
'I will not listen to that sort
of language. Apologize!'

Behind me, I hear Mom
gasp. But I was on a roll.
"I'm sorry, Bishop

I'm sorry I ever believed
you might have something
worthwhile to say. ~ Ellen Hopkins

...They came to see me too,Varya said.It was a joke.They asked if I believed in God...Yes Mikhail Yırevich repeated,that question shouldn't be in there.The first census after the revolution was in 1920 and when Lenin saw the question on faith,he had them take it out.He understood the inequity of the question. ~ Anatoli Rybakov

Education should not be a competition resulting in winners and losers. Education should be a competition against ignorance, and all should be encouraged to win. ~ K.A. Brill

The MLK Shabbat Suppers focused on the theme of educational inequity, which Dr. King considered inextricably linked to the struggle for equality and justice. ~ Lynn Schusterman

The notion that Google/ Alphabet has the potential to be a democratizing force is certainly laudable, but the contradictions inherent in its projects must be contextualized in the historical conditions that both create and are created by it. ~ Safiya Umoja Noble

I look for stories that tell transformative, emotional journeys, have big emotional worlds, feel very relevant and true to the times we're living in - even though they might be of a different time - have a sense of real intimacy with larger forces at work, where there's some kind of social injustice and inequity happening that needs to be conquered or addressed. I find historically that's the formula for a lot of successful operas. ~ Jake Heggie

People are more concerned about the economy then these ridiculous concerns as to gender inequity in society, as manifested in marriages, in the mental health system, and then in literature. ~ Kate Zambreno

Visible barriers unseen by choice,
Trip and trap innocents who have no voice.
Why choose not to see clear inequity? ~ Brenda Vicars

In this way, writers are indeed, as Henry Miller suggested, traitors to the human race. We may turn a light on inequity, injustice, and oppression from time to time, but we regularly kill what we love in insidious fashion. ~ Anthony Bourdain

We hold demonstrations and civil wars when inequities are discovered. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Most people who are selling their mineral rights, this is a once-in-a-lifetime transaction. The people who are buying, the landmen who are coming in, do it every day. So there's a little inequity there about knowledge. ~ Mike DeWine

Yeah... they tell you to work from the inside, which is perhaps their greatest deception of all... ~ Josh Burggraf

Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school - and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives. ~ Jonathan Kozol

How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices. ~ Howard Zinn

In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work. ~ Paul Farmer

Black New Yorkers' distressing personal accounts of poverty and unemployment, inadequate housing, white supremacy and state-sanctioned violence politicized St. Clair, leading her to become one of New York's staunchest yet most unlikely voices against urban inequity. ~ LaShawn Harris

All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

We arrive at demonstrations excited, as if our favorite musician is playing on the speakers' stage. We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the racial problem when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings. We go home fulfilled, like we dined at our favorite restaurant. And this fulfillment is fleeting, like a drug high. The problems of inequity and injustice persist. They persistently make us feel bad and guilty. We persistently do something to make ourselves feel better as we convince ourselves we are making society better, as we never make society better. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

In thirty years, the narratives of my sons will be different from mine. Because today I am telling my truth and standing in a pool of my trauma, making myself uncomfortable and, hopefully, making you uncomfortable too. Today, I am making it known that when color is clear, when race and inequity are not ignored, and when our differences are not only acknowledged but championed as one of the most valuable aspects of life, we can work together to make meaningful strides toward true social justice. ~ Bellamy Shoffner

Legislators in Kansas, Arizona and 23 other states who are properly determined to protect religious freedom can begin by asking themselves: Does any religious conviction justify denying lesbians and gays a basic legal promise of non-discrimination in hiring, public accommodations, and housing? Surely the answer to this question is no. Correcting that inequity would begin the process of recognizing that both sides - gay couples and religious objectors - have rights and that reasonable accommodation is possible only when both sides have something to gain. ~ David Blankenhorn

Certain rich men, whose lives are evil and corrupt, are the representatives of predatory wealth accumulated by all forms of inequity, from the oppression of wage workers to unfair methods of crushing out competition. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Children get dealt grossly unequal hands, but that is all the more reason to treat them equally in school, Chris thought. "I think the cruelest form of prejudice is ... if I ever said, 'Clarence is poor, so I'll expect less of him than Alice.' Maybe he won't do what Alice does. But I want his best." She knew that precept wasn't as simple as it sounded. Treating children equally often means treating them very differently. But it also means bringing the same moral force to bear on all of them, saying, in effect, to Clarence that you matter as much as Alice and won't get away with not working, and to Alice that you won't be allowed to stay where you are either. ~ Tracy Kidder

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world. ~ Bill Gates

I tore the curtain down and roared, "I see inequity."
But countless veils, shifting and sheer, deftly blinded me.
So I, pumped with pride, still failed to see the way I see.
Veils, unseen and unnamed,
Will unremoved remain. ~ Brenda Vicars

Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it. ~ Wendy Kopp

Then we are nothing to him,' said the merchant, sorrow brimming in his eyes. 'I surrendered everything, all my wealth, for yet another indifferent god. If he cannot protect us, what is the point?'

She wished that she had an answer to such questions. Were these not the very grist of priestly endeavours? To grind out palatable answers, to hint of promising paths to true salvation? To show a benign countenance gifted by god-given wisdom, glowing as if fanned by sacred breath? 'It is my feeling,' she said, haltingly, 'that a faith that delivers perfect answers to every question is not a true faith, for its only purpose is to satisfy, to ease the mind and so end its questing.' She held up a hand to still the objections she saw awakened among these six honest, serious believers. 'Is it for faith to deliver peace, when on all sides inequity thrives? For it shall indeed thrive, when the blessed walk past blissfully blind, content in their own moral purity, in the peace filling their souls. Oh, you might then reach out a hand to the wretched by the roadside, offering them your own footprints, and you may see the blessed burgeon in number, grow into a multitude, until you are as an army. But there will be, will ever be, those who turn away from your hand. The ones who quest because it is in their nature to quest, who fear the seduction of self-satisfaction, who mistrust easy answers. Are these ones then to be your enemy? Does the army grow angered now? Does it strike out at ~ Steven Erikson

The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in the woods was Corporal Whitcomb, his assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist, was a disgruntled subordinate who felt he could do the chaplain's job much better than the chaplain was doing it and viewed himself, therefore, as an underprivileged victim of social inequity. ~ Joseph Heller

On average, our corps members stay in the classroom for eight years. But again, given the systemic nature of educational inequity, we know it is vital that some of our alumni take their experience outside the classroom. ~ Wendy Kopp

Defining freedom cannot amount to simply substituting it with inclusion. Countering the criminalization of Black girls requires fundamentally altering the relationship between Black girls and the institutions of power that have worked to reinforce their subjugation. History has taught us that civil rights are but one component of a larger movement for this type of social transformation. Civil rights may be at the core of equal justice movements, and they may elevate an equity agenda that protects our children from racial and gender discrimination, but they do not have the capacity to fully redistribute power and eradicate racial inequity. There is only one practice that can do that. Love. ~ Monique Morris

Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136) ~ Howard Gardner

Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with bigotry of all kinds, justifying all kinds of inequities by victim blaming; heightening exploitation and misplaced hate; spurring mass shootings, arms races, and demagogues who polarize nations, shutting essential organs of democracy; and threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change. In the United States, the metastatic cancer has been spreading, contracting, and threatening to kill the American body as it nearly did before its birth, as it nearly did during its Civil War. But how many people stare inside the body of their nations' racial inequities, their neighborhoods' racial inequities, their occupations' racial inequities, their institutions' racial inequities, and flatly deny that their policies are racist? They flatly deny that racial inequity is a signpost of racist policy. They flatly deny the racist policy as they use racist ideas to justify the racial inequity. They flatly deny the cancer of racism as the cancer cells spread and literally threaten their own lives and the lives of the people and spaces and places they hold dear. The popular conception of denial-like the popular strategy of suasion-is suicidal. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

Works of piety and charity ... are necessary in this present life for as long as inequality prevails. Their workings here would not be required were it not for the superabundant numbers of the poor, the needy, and the sick ... As long as this inequity rages in the world, these good works will be necessary and valuable to anyone practicing them and they shall yield the reward of an everlasting inheritance to the man of good heart and concerned will. ~ John Cassian

The solutions are obvious. Stop making excuses. Stop saying women run publishing. Stop justifying the lack of parity in prominent publications that have the resources to address gender inequity. Stop parroting the weak notiong that you're simply publishing the best writing, regardless. There is ample evidence of the excellence of women writers. Publish more women writers. If women aren't submitting to your publication or press, ask yourself why, deal with the answers even if those answers make you uncomfortable, and then reach out to women writers. If women don't respond to your solicitations, go find other women. Keep doing that, issue after issue after issue. Read more widely. Create more inclusive measures of excellence. Ensure that books by mean and women are being reviewed in equal numbers. Nominate more deserving women for the important awards. Deal with your resentment. Deal with your biases. Vigorously resist the urge to dismiss the gender problem. Make the effort and make the effort and make the effort until you no longer need to, until we don't need to keep having this conversation.

Change requires intent and effort. It really is that simple. ~ Roxane Gay

Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.
Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers- and let us not be coy here- naught but murder.
And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause. ~ Steven Erikson

The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries! ~ Alice Walker

The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job. The ultimate weapon in the war between the sexes: the limp prick. The banner of the enemy's encampment: the prick at half-mast. The symbol of the apocalypse: the atomic warhead prick which self-destructs. That was the basic inequity which could never be righted: not that the male had a wonderful added attraction called a penis, but that the female had a wonderful all-weather cunt. Neither storm nor sleet nor dark of night could faze it. It was always there, always ready. Quite terrifying, when you think about it. No wonder men hated women. No wonder they invented the myth of female inadequacy. ~ Erica Jong

He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being's natural incentive to work
his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy
and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

So long as people give priority to material values, then injustice, inequity, intolerance, and greed - all the outward manifestations of neglect of our inner values - will persist. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Rapid growth in wealth inequality results in the inevitable isolation of a very small, very rich, very privileged section of the community from the material experiences of everyone else. And when this out-of-touch minority group is enfranchised to make the decisions on behalf of people they don't know, can't see, have no wish to understand, and think of entirely in dehumanised, transactional, abstract terms, the results for the rest of us are devastating. ~ Sally McManus

[W]hen injustice, robbery, and inequity are not just individual but institutional, it's time to take a political stand. ~ Alisa Harris

The more you look into health and health inequalities, you realize that a lot of it is not due to a particular disease - it's really linked to underlying societal issues such as poverty, inequity, lack of access to safe drinking water and housing. And these are all the things we focus on at CARE. ~ Helene D. Gayle

Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity, from racism, from whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn't just race that was a social construct. So was I. ~ Tim Wise

When you start peeling the onion and uncovering layers and layers of inequity that have been subsidized by government, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. ~ Robert D Bullard

You see two rulers of a vast empire who just so happen to despise virtually every trait that empire possesses. The inequity, the cruel expression of privilege and the oppression of the dispossessed. The sheer idiocy of a value system that raises useless metals and meaningless writs above that of humanity and plain decency. ~ Steven Erikson

The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically. ~ Frans De Waal

Intimate justice touches on ideas of gender inequity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health. I don't expect a 15-year-old girl to have that figured out; it's hard enough to have it figured out when you're 50. ~ Peggy Orenstein

Well, now those young women had gotten angry. And some older women were rearing back in horror at the force of their rage, and at the fact that a lot of that rage involved interrogating the whole system within which their feminist elders had risen. This moment was asking not just men but the pioneering women who'd succeeded alongside them to reckon with what had not been changed by feminism, how much gendered inequity older feminists had decided to live with, to participate in. ~ Rebecca Traister

I firmly believe that the inequity [in society] is enormous. The people have the feeling that you are allowed to do anything if you are rich. But if you're poor, you have to pay. We [Europeans] have to counter this. ~ Martin Schulz

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. ~ Frederick Douglass

People who "don't consider race or gender" sure seem to end up hiring almost all white guys, almost as if they're absolutely considering race and gender. ~ Hank Green

I have a lot of interests in global issues, as you know, humanity, inequity, arms control, and I continue to be active on all these issues. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We were convinced of the inherent madness of codified inequity. All cooperation involves some measure of surrender. And coercion. But the alternative, being anarchy, is itself no worthy virtue. It is but an excuse for selfish aggression, and all that seeks justification from taking that stance is, each and every time, cold-hearted. Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin. [ ... ] We rejected civilization, but so too we rejected anarchy for its petty belligerence and the weakness of thought it announced. By these decisions, we made ourselves lost and bereft of purpose. ~ Steven Erikson

There is no achievement gap at birth. ~ Lisa Delpit

Then they could discuss the possibilities of social inequity, the way your socks always fall down when you're wearing rubber boots, and the importance of being earnest. ~ Stephen King