#minorities

In 1969, when I graduated from Harvard Law School, women and minorities made up a tiny fraction of the first year associates accepted by top law firms. ↗

— Jane Harman

#associates #firms #first #fraction #graduated

Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression. ↗

— James K. Polk

#appeal #constitution #minorities #oppression #right

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#claim #defenders #deny #earth #individual

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 Díaz

#intelligence #minorities #readers #x-men #intelligence

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

#minorities #persecution #love

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 “issue” 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.” 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. - posted at Kirkus Review in post "Straight-Laced Dystopias ↗

— Paolo Bacigalupi

#lgbtq #minorities #representation #teens #writing

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. ↗

— John Acton

#certain #country #enjoyed #free #judge

I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#average #equal #i #i think #identification

The terrible tyranny of the majority. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#diversity #minorities #democracy

It's always the minorities who aren't a part of the mainstream who define what the limits... of the majority are going to be. ↗

— Rose Bird

#define #going #limits #mainstream #majority