“Decolonial feminism arrives at a similar conclusion that gender is not an innocent concept. This school of thought points to gender as a colonial introduction. As a concept gender did not exist among indigenous and black people; more fluid categorisations prevailed”
“White fear emanates from knowing that white privilege exists and the anxiety that it might end.”
“There is a difference between agreement and understanding: When discussing complex social and institutional dynamics such as racism, consider whether I don t agree may actually mean I don t understand.”
“My mother calls it the black tax. Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up from zero.”
“We would often lead workshops in offices that were 95-100% white, and yet the participants would bitterly complain about Affirmative Action. This would unnerve me as I looked around these rooms and saw only white people. Clearly these white people were employed - we were in their workplace, after all. There were no people of color here, yet white people were making enraged claims that people of color were taking their jobs. This outrage was not based in any racial reality, yet obviously the emotion was real. I began to wonder how we managed to maintain that reality - how could we not see how white the workplace and its leadership was, at the very moment that we were complaining about not being able to get jobs because people of color would be hired over us ? How were we, as white people, able to enjoy so much racial privilege and dominance in the workplace, yet believe so deeply that racism had changed direction to now victimize us?”
“[I]t is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider...You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive.”
“He has no education. He has no skills. He doesn t know what to do, where to be. The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world.”
“We don t have to be aware of racism in order for it to exist.”
“Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing ideologies of individualism and meritocracy. They also do whites a disservice by obscuring the white allies behind the scenes who worked hard and long to open the field. These allies could serve as much-needed role models for other whites.”
“Invisible She scanned through the magazine for girls who looked like her with deeper hues, flat nose, and thick hair. The day she turned fifteen she scrubbed herself with bleach while screaming for God, whispering over and over again the darker the skin, the deeper the struggle releasing a sigh that made her soul shake.”
“Though the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress. If he comes in ignorance, rags, and wretchedness, he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome. But if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar, and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence. In the one case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an affront to pride and provokes malice. Let him do what he will, there is at present, therefore, no escape for him. The color line meets him everywhere, and in a measure shuts him out from all respectable and profitable trades and callings.”
“All these Muslims are all the same. All these Muslims are all terrorists. All these Muslims are all a threat to the Western world. Yeah, sure. That s why they re fighting each other in the Middle East, And killing so many more Muslims than anyone else, Whilst asylum seekers flee.”
“When African slave Phillis Wheatley wrote poetry, 18 men came to assess whether that was possible.”
“Needless to say, this fragile experiment began by taking for granted the ugly conquest of Amerindians and Mexicans, the exclusion of women, the subordination of European working-class men and the closeting of homosexuals. These realities made many of the words of the revolutionary Declaration of Independence ring a bit hollow. yet the enslavement of Africans -- over 20 percent of the population -- served as the linchpin of American democracy; that is, the much-heralded stability and continuity of American democracy was predicated upon black oppression and degradation. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be white -- they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.”
“Privilege is when you can afford to sit back and criticize others who have to fight for the things you take for granted.”
“White liberals are always saying, What can we do?” I mean, they’re always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let’s say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It’s obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I’d help the man who didn’t have the gun, if the man who had the fun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn’t like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn’t have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say “Let me help you,” and what they mean is “help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you. If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.”
“Tolerance of intolerance enables oppression.”