Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born September 10, 1939) is an American historian, writer and feminist.

Quotes

• I was also becoming more and more troubled by male chauvinism in the movement… Returning to the United States and organizing in the Boston area, I got angrier and angrier at men in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the anti-draft movement, the motto of which was, “Girls say yes to boys who say no.” I hadn’t felt oppressed so much directly, but of course I was, although I had been treated as a kind of “honorary” man. Once I started taking a feminist stand I got condemned. It was pretty hard to take at the time. And male chauvinism had terrible consequences for the women’s movement and for the development of the left, because it took some of the strongest feminists out of the Left and made the Left unwelcoming to newly politicized young women.
  • On her early experiences as an activist in "A sense of hope and the possibility of solidarity" in International Socialist Review

• I think Marxism is a hard sell in the Native movement and for African Americans but less so for Mexican Americans because of their political genealogies. Today it’s even difficult for Chicanos, as well as Native Americans, because Marxism is deemed just Western epistemology or a Western worldview. There is of course a lot of Eurocentrism in Marx’s early writings. There is the idea of progress, but people don’t look at his later work enough, when he was getting into ethnology…
  • On how people of color may receive Marxism in "A sense of hope and the possibility of solidarity" in International Socialist Review

• The left blames white nationalism. The right blames mental illness. Neither explains that it happens often here and nowhere else. But mass shootings account for a very small number of gun deaths: Many more women are killed in their home by guns. Men used to just knock women around, but rarely did death result. But with a gun on hand, there's a death. Half of the gun deaths are suicide. The proliferation of guns is a huge problem, but its cause is not lack of regulations. There were lots of regulations in the '70s when this started; going postal and school shootings started in the '70s.
  • On how she views gun violence in the United States in “Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: ‘The Second Amendment is Almost a Time Bomb That Was Planted in the Constitution’” in Willamette Week (2018 Feb 21)

• This rise of the Second Amendment is almost a time bomb that was planted in the Constitution. A mandate for the legality of settler violence and settler sovereignty. What's that right about? It's about taking all the property. They're a vestige, but they're very powerful. They have a voice in the presidency and in the Congress.
  • On her view of the Second Amendment in “Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: ‘The Second Amendment is Almost a Time Bomb That Was Planted in the Constitution’” in Willamette Week (2018 Feb 21)

External links