Audre Lorde Quotes About Oppression

Quotes about: Oppression

• Oppression is as American as apple pie.

  Audre Lorde

  Apples, Pie, Apple Pie

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.114, Crossing Press

• What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?

  Audre Lorde

  Faces, Oppression, Print

• Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged... We have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression... Survival is learning to take our difference and make them strengths.

  Audre Lorde

  Powerful, Views, Differences

• I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.

  Audre Lorde

  Struggle, Mean, Feminist

• If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Color, White

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

• Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.

  Audre Lorde

  Gay, Men, Issues

• For we have built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression and these must be altered at the same time that we alter the living condition which are the result of those structures. For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.

  Audre Lorde

  Expectations, House, Tools

• As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

  Audre Lorde

  Meaningful, Acceptance, Self

• There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions

  Audre Lorde

  Hierarchy, Oppression

• In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

  Audre Lorde

  Order, Energy, Culture

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.53, Crossing Press

• The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries.

  Audre Lorde

  Mean, Doe, Oppression

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.70, Crossing Press

• From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Color, Differences

• If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.

  Audre Lorde

  Taught Us, Action, Oppression

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.142, Crossing Press

• The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.

  Audre Lorde

  Loyal, May, Oppression

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