Gloria Steinem - Class Quotes

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If you think about Martin Luther King and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, they were all college-educated, middle class people. Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.
It's true that the National Organization for Women in its early years was white middle class. But once it was joined by younger women from civil rights groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) it changed profoundly. In any case, my life's ambition is to make white women as smart as black women. Because the group of women who still vote against their own self-interest are white married women.

Gloria Steinem
However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.

Gloria Steinem
The patterns that are normalized in the family — the whole idea that some people cook and some people eat, that some listen and others talk, and even that some people control others in very economic or even violent ways — that kind of hierarchy is what makes us vulnerable to believing in class hierarchy, to believing in racial hierarchy, and so on.

Gloria Steinem
Regarding the idea that the women's movement is white and middle class — a fair share of the country is white and middle class. And certainly, there are racist white women. Certainly, there are sexist black men. All those things are true. But the other thing that's never said is that black women are much more likely to support feminist issues than white women. It makes sense because they're much more likely to be on the paid labor force than white women. And if you've experienced discrimination for one reason, you're probably more likely to recognize it for another reason.

Gloria Steinem
Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

Gloria Steinem