William Ryan > Quotes

“A victim of his environment, the ghetto child begins his school career, psychologically, socially, and physically disadvantaged.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“The middle class child says a rock is a stone; a lower class child says a rock is hard, and you throw it.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“The culturally deprived children of Roxbury need education, not transportation.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“Many of these children have low aspirational levels, lack those out-of-school experiences which are so richly provided when parents are in more favorable circumstances.…”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“Blaming the Victim occurs exclusively within an exceptionalistic framework, and it consists of applying exceptionalistic explanations to universalistic problems. This represents an illogical departure from fact, a method, in Mannheim’s words, of systematically distorting reality, of developing an ideology. Blaming the Victim can take its place in a long series of American ideologies that have rationalized cruelty and injustice.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“We know poor and middle class children exhibit certain differences in styles of talking and thinking, but we do not know yet why or how these differences occur.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“Serious students of language (as it relates to social class) have dealt, not with simple-minded concepts like “verbal” and “nonverbal,” but rather with issues of style and of differing ways of using and relating to language.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“It is important not to delude ourselves into thinking that ideological monstrosities were constructed by monsters. They were not; they are not.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“We do know, however, that these differences—really dfferences in style rather than ability—are not handicaps or disabilities (unlike such barriers to learning as poor vision, mild brain damage, emotional disturbance or orthopedic handicap).”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“(In a society in which everyone is assumed and expected to be economically self-sufficient, as an example, doesn’t economic dependency almost automatically mean poverty? No attention is given to such issues.)”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim

“This is an example of applying an exceptionalistic solution to a universalistic problem. It is not accurate to say that lead poisoning results from the actions of individual neglectful mothers. Rather, lead poisoning is a social phenomenon supported by a number of social mechanisms, one of the most tragic by-products of the systematic toleration of slum housing.”
― William Ryan, Blaming the Victim