“Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.”

—  Gloria Steinem

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class." by Gloria Steinem?
Gloria Steinem photo
Gloria Steinem 97
American feminist and journalist 1934

Related quotes

Gloria Steinem photo

“Regarding the idea that the women’s movement is white and middle class — a fair share of the country is white and middle class.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: 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.

Hermann Rauschning photo

“The revolutionary elements within the middle class came together in the youth movement and its Bünde, and began to destroy the middle class from within… It is doubtful whether the anti-capitalist youth of the middle class origin could have entered into a fruitful association with the proletarian youth.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 65

Hillary Clinton photo

“I'm telling you right now, we're going to write fairer rules for the middle class and we are going to raise taxes on the middle class!”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Clinton: 'Raise Taxes On The Middle Class!' 8-1-2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ua13_gYQn0; as quoted in "Hillary Promises ‘We Are Going To Raise Taxes On The Middle Class’ <nowiki>[Video http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/03/hillary-promises-we-are-going-to-raise-taxes-on-the-middle-class-video/</nowiki>"] by Derek Hunter, The Daily Caller (3 August 2016).
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

Hugh Gaitskell photo

“The success of the middle class alliance depended on the acceptance by the working class element of middle class leadership and middle class ideas.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Chartism: An Introductory Essay (1929), p. 85

Glenn Beck photo

“That is not the dream. That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it. They're perverting it, and they're doing it intentionally. And they're selling us a line of global nonsense.
2010s, 2010

Ian Kershaw photo

“German’ socialism came to be wholly associated with the extreme anti-liberal politics of the antisemitic and völkisch movement. The appeal here was mainly to the lower-middle classes—traders, craftsmen, small farmers, lower civil servants—and rooted in a combination of antisemitism, extreme nationalism, and vehement anti-capitalism”

Ian Kershaw (1943) British historian

usually interpreted as ‘Jewish’ capitalism
Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 135

“There were various kinds of direct action in the nineteen-sixties: the Civil Rights movement, in which minorities realized that nobody would do anything for them, that they had to do things for themselves; the women's movement, in which women realized they themselves had to do something about their rights; the environmental movement; and other social movements. The point is that people could not get what they wanted through the system — they had to get it directly. It is no wonder that what began as an idealistic concern for those who were deprived of their rights led to a great deal of selfishness by those who were not deprived. And here lies the affinity between the radicalism of the nineteen-sixties and the conservatism of the nineteen-eighties. Both grew from the same soil: They are different responses to the same problem.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)

H.L. Mencken photo

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

33
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Chap. 14 : Diminished Expectations
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005)

Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“The organization in which this movement was embodied, after three centuries of obscurity and oppression, rose triumphant to be the dominant power of the civilized world. Christian churches were scattered broadcast over the Roman Empire. …Its churches were endowed with the ancient properties and rights of the temples. Its clergy were given immunity from the taxes and exactions which crushed all other classes. Its members filled the civil service. Its great bishops had the ear of the men in power.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 143-144

Related topics