The issues that matter to women also matter to communities... and these issues have a ripple effect all across the country. And the purist sense of the feminist tradition - feminism is not anti-man. It is pro-humanity.
I don't want our white working class sisters and brothers to feel as though their pain is not important because it is. But at the same time, I want my white sisters and brothers to understand that when we talk about income and wealth inequality, that disproportionately African Americans suffer a little more.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the pain of all working-class individuals while highlighting the specific struggles faced by African Americans regarding income and wealth inequality.
Nina Turner's quote draws attention to the pain experienced by the white working-class community while urging an understanding that African Americans face a greater extent of hardship related to income and wealth inequality. It highlights the need for collective compassion and awareness of different social struggles, suggesting that recognizing the uniqueness of varied experiences can foster unity and empathy across racial lines.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a community meeting discussing economic policies, this quote can be used to foster dialogue on the need for inclusive approaches to economic reform.
More from Nina Turner
All quotes →If not for food stamps, Medicaid, and various job programs, I would never have gone on to be the first in my family to go to college, the first black woman to represent my ward on the Cleveland City Council, and, ultimately, a State Senator.
I am a black woman, last time I checked.
Whether it is access to voting rights, representation in government, or the outsized influence of money in our political system, the opportunity to interact with and participate in democracy is available to some, but blocked for many.
All of the great social justice advances that we ever had in this country have come not from people with big titles and not from people at the top, but just from everyday people getting together saying 'Enough is enough. I'm going to change this, and I'm going to get involved, and I am going to be engaged.'
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'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.
We have a deeply rooted misconception in our country that unhoused people have done something to deserve their conditions - when the reality is that unhoused people are living the consequences of our government's failure to secure the basic necessities people need to survive.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.