“We have too often celebrated progress and not understood the dangers of an earlier majority becoming a minority. There are plenty of examples. For instance, the crime of lynching became commonplace not during slavery but after emancipation, when white racists feared the new voting and economic power of black Americans. The Civil War had eliminated slavery but hadn’t challenged the power of racism. ”
“The first generation that is majority babies of color has already been born. This is a great thing for our country in a post-colonial and striving to become post-racist age, but it is also energizing a racist and anti-immigrant reaction. The depth of white racism and anti-feminism can be seen as a white nationalist effort to persuade, reward, or otherwise force white women to have more children. This is also a motivation of the antiabortion movement.”
“Dorothy Dinnerstein, a very wise philosopher, once said that a crucial purpose of birth families is to make sure we know, value, and even love people we don’t agree with. Learning to accept and even love difference, as she pointed out, is important for the future of the human race.”
“Valerie Hudson and other scholars conducted a study of violence in a hundred nations around the world. The single biggest determinant of whether a nation would be violent, both in its own streets and in military violence against another country, was domestic violence in the home. More than poverty, access to natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy, they found violence against females was the indicator and normalizer of all other violence. The less gender-polarized the culture, the lower the degree of violence and the greater the degree of democracy.”
by Gloria Steinem, from The Truth will Set You Free, but First it Will Piss You Off
