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“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Since childhood, I’d believed it was important to speak out against bullies while also not stooping to their level. And to be clear, we were now up against a bully, a man who among other things demeaned minorities and expressed contempt for prisoners of war, challenging the dignity of our country with practically his every utterance. I wanted Americans to understand that words matter—that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it. It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for—the idea that as a nation we might hold on to the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations. Dignity had always gotten us through. It was a choice, and not always the easy one, but the people I respected most in life made it again and again, every single day. There was a motto Barack and I tried to live by, and I offered it that night from the stage: When they go low, we go high.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore. A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf.”
― Armistead Maupin

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Well, I'm not here to impinge on anybody else's lifestyle. If I'm in a place where I know I'm going to harm somebody's health or somebody asks me to please not smoke, I just go outside and smoke. But I do resent the way the nonsmoking mentality has been imposed on the smoking minority. Because, first of all, in a democracy, minorities do have rights. And, second, the whole pitch about smoking has gone from being a health issue to a moral issue, and when they reduce something to a moral issue, it has no place in any kind of legislation, as far as I'm concerned.”
― Frank Zappa

“Sam, that's a great concept. And maybe you believe it. But I'm black and I'm a lesbian, so let me tell you: From what I know? Personal experience? There are always lines.”
― Michael Grant, Hunger

“The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the “issueâ€� books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an entertainment, experiencing the thrills and chills of a world more adventurous than our own.

And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, “Sorry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different.â€� You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi

“ Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure...What's to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims on the arena have to be saints?

...A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority - not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities - because all minorities are in competition; each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.”
― Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

“I was by now used to people being surprised by me and my background, and their surprise offended me. I was always having to be what I was looking for in the world, wishing the person I would become already existed â€� some other I before me. I was forever finding even the tiniest way to identify with someone to escape how empty the world seemed to be of what I was.”
― Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.'

My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer.

-Guest blog - what diversity means to me”
― Zoë Marriott

“Be nice,' we're often told,
particularly we women--
along with other populations under-appreciated
and over-oppressed...
Until recently, that has mostly been said to those without power...
Because those in power didn't have to be nice,
were never expected to be nice.

Recently it's being said more often to those with great power,
and there is value in that.”
― Shellen Lubin

“In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

“In modern societies, some members of ethnic minority groups do not want to feel compelled to heed the voices of their communities when participating as citizens.”
― Michael Kenny, The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference

“Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly â€� if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist â€� then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty â€� or rather, why should we â€� if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until
someone decides to clean it up.

Blog Post: Love Team Freezer”
― Foz Meadows

“Does assimilation mean that they never came up against naked prejudice? Does it mean that you understood where the limits of your social world were and you stuck to them?”
― Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss

“Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.”
― Lucy Parsons

“Identifying as a woman of colour has been crucial in my understanding of structural politics in society. But this focus hasn't changed the plantation structure, the violence against black bodies and women's bodies. When we stake our primary claim on a racial identity, that identity can be used against us, to keep us in our category, to keep us divided. When we are so divided, it appears that it is impossible to address inequality, because it looks as though we're calling for "sameness" not equality. Which is, of course, not what we want at all.”
― Tessa McWatt, Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging

“How many times can you divide a minority cultureâ€�.”
― Isabel Waidner, We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff

“The Tuskegee experiments are certainly a good reason for ongoing mistrust, but it is important not to overlook mistrust that is generated from contemporary health care experiences.”
― Clare Xanthos, Social Determinants of Health Among African-American Men

“This entire experience, although seemingly harmless in the grand cosmic scheme of life, was a perfect microcosm of the American dream. The good minority earned his rank by beating up the bad minority--a tale as old as the founding of this country. You try to gain as much proximity to whiteness and as much distance as you can from Blackness or the villain of the day, in order to become accepted by the mainstream.”
― Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American

“The "model minority" myth is a dangerous drug manufactured and promoted by the Whiteness. It ignores all of our diverse experiences and narratives, eliminates all nuances, and lumps us with a convenient stereotype that always renders us as foreigners. It overlooks the discrimination, bias, and hate experienced by our communities and, perhaps worst of all, uses us, Asian and South Asian immigrants in particular, to launder systemic racism and discrimination against poor Black and Latino communities. Why can't they be "models" like us? Because they are lazy freeloaders who don't take personal responsibility, whine about racism, and refuse to pull themselves up by their bootstraps! The system turns us into enforcers and defenders of Whiteness, promising success and safety in exchange for loyalty and obedience. But it's an abusive, toxic relationship, in which the system has always betrayed us on a whim, without remorse or hesitation. Being a "model minority" doesn't live up to the hype.”
― Wajahat Ali, Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American

“I know this country well. Well enough to understand that justice takes time, and that the freedoms of a minority are rarely self-evident to the majority. What is perfectly selfevident to God is â€� unfortunately! â€� too often obscure or invisible to his flawed creations. The minds of men move peculiarly slowly.”
― Zadie Smith, The Fraud

“And yet to reach for examples from the Holocaust, or the Jewish diaspora, has become a natural reflex when the question of ethnic or religious minorities comes up. It is a moral yardstick, yet at the same time an evasion. To be reminded of past crimes, of negligence or complicity, is never a bad thing. But it can confuse the issues at hand, or worse, bring all discussion to a halt by tarring opponents with the brush of mass murder.”
― Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance

“We're minorities within minorities, I'd often repeat to my friend, in an attempt to subdue his frustration with the compounding obstacles of his life.”
― Anthony Veasna So, Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes

“But—please, hear me out—don't you think difference breathes in the expanses that lie amid your monotonous thoughts? Even as you see in the future only suicide, your mind fosters so many novel meanings that are essential, rabbit holes leading to unknown hours and possibilities, and maybe if you wait, for just a bit longer, these meanings will bleed into your being, restructuring the reserves of your spirit, and maybe then, after a serious exploration of all that is true, you, my dear friend, will feel something akin to new.”
― Anthony Veasna So, Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes

“You can only keep up the precarious act of sustaining this fantasy of a better world for so long when not much has actually changed in our favor. But as long as there's something new in our queue, after binging on a season or two, we can move on, forestalling a confrontation with the shallow, messy world we ultimately inhabit.”
― Anthony Veasna So, Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes

“Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“The Dark Cloud
Is the degradation minorities face because they want to be a dreamer and a doer
Is the sculpted destiny of someone who was born poor
Is the suffocating feeling you get when you are told to shut up
Is the tragic life story of a sick child who has cancer and who can’t even hold a cup”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“The Dark Cloud
Is the certificate of completion you got but then got told you don’t have a clue
Is the coldness you feel when people criticize and categorize you
Is the lack of cultural representation that minorities always get
Is the ignorance that people have and how they want history to forget”
― Aida Mandic, The Dark Cloud

“In an intellectual battle, you do not need to convert everyone. History is made by minorities - or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing actively to concern himself with intellectual issues. Here is not quantity, but quality that counts (the quality - and consistency - of the ideas one is advocating”
― Ayn Rand