Melissa V. Harris-Perry Quotes

#1. Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#2. A person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves.24

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#3. At its core, black theology is predicated on the assertion that God has a unique relationship with African Americans. God is not a passive bystander in human history but rather an active participant in the struggles of oppressed and dispossessed people.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#4. Sisters are more than the sum of their relative disadvantages: they are active agents who craft meaning out of their circumstances and do so in complicated and diverse ways.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#5. I am concerned that in their efforts to evade the Sapphire stereotype, black women may be discouraged from demanding equal consideration of their specific political needs within black political discourses.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#6. The mythology of black women as promiscuous was important to maintaining the profitable exploitation of slave society. In freedom, it remained important as a means of racial and gender control.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#7. Misrecognition subverts the possibility of equal democratic participation.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#8. Therapists are less likely to perceive a black woman as sad; instead they see her as angry or anxious.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#9. Women were expected to sit in the pews, receiving messages from men in the pulpit. Their role was to recognize God in their pastor, not to expect or demand that he recognize God in them.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#10. Their anger is not experienced as a psychological reality but is seen through an ideology that distorts black women's lived experiences.

Melissa V. Harris-Perry