Quotes & Sayings About Blaming The Poor

Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible. — Wangari Maathai

I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed. — Howard Zinn

If our primary caregivers are shame-based, they will act shameless and pass their toxic shame onto us. There is no way to teach self-value if one does not value oneself. Toxic shame is multigenerational. It is passed from one generation to the next. Shame-based people find other shame-based people and get married. As each member of a couple carries the shame from his or her own family system, their marriage will be grounded in their shame-core. The major outcome of this will be a lack of intimacy. It's difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Confluence creates pseudointimacy. — John Bradshaw

The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories ... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits. — Molly Ivins

The main difference is that the enlightened believe that the poor criminal should be rehabilitated while the righteous believe that the immoral criminal should be locked up in jail. Since almost the only available system of rehabilitation in America is to be locked up in jail, the difference remains highly abstract. — William Ryan

Do you know what's so strange, Uilleam?" she asked, saying his name perfectly. "You have never, in your entire life, done something for which you should truly be ashamed. You think you have, but you haven't. Not until you hurt your own mate, blaming the poor girl for things she can't control."
- NIX to MacRieve ~ — Kresley Cole

Blaming destiny is a poor out for those who don't reach desired destinations. — Malcolm Forbes

A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth," Edie said. "The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own character. Well, of course, that won't do. That would mean having to assume some responsibility for his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he'd much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way. — Donna Tartt

My aim is not to provide excuses for black behavior or to absolve blacks of personal responsibility. But when the new black conservatives accent black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people. We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective.
— Cornel West