Patricia Hill Collins Quotes

#1. Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate

Patricia Hill Collins

#2. Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

Patricia Hill Collins

#3. Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.

Patricia Hill Collins

#4. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

Patricia Hill Collins

#5. Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

Patricia Hill Collins

#6. Far too many black men who praise their own mother feel less accounted to the mothers of their own children.

Patricia Hill Collins

#7. Thus, gender ideology no only creates ides about femininity but it also shapes conceptions of masculinity.

Patricia Hill Collins

#8. Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups.

Patricia Hill Collins

#9. Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children.

Patricia Hill Collins

#10. Women gain social influence through their roles as mothers, transmitters of culture, and parents for the next generation.

Patricia Hill Collins

#11. Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

Patricia Hill Collins

#12. A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that's considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer.

Patricia Hill Collins

#13. Challenging power structures from the inside, working the cracks within the system, however, requires learning to speak multiple languages of power convincingly.

Patricia Hill Collins

#14. The role model approach to social change is no substitute for challenging unjust employment practices, educational policies and housing.

Patricia Hill Collins

#15. I suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women's reality by those who live it.

Patricia Hill Collins