“It is bad psychology to tell people who do not believe that they are racist—who may even actively despise racism—that there is nothing they can do to stop themselves from being racist—and then ask them to help you. It is even less helpful to tell them that even their own good intentions are proof of their latent racism. Worst of all is to set up double-binds, like telling them that if they notice race it is because they are racist, but if they don’t notice race it’s because their privilege affords them the luxury of not noticing race, which is racist.”
“Boy-next-door, Rena knew, always meant white boy next door. When America has one natural blonde family left, its members will be trotted out to play every role that calls for someone all-American, to be interviewed in every time of crisis. They will be exhausted.”
“Audrey wonders if he ll die IN his country before he ever gets a chance to die FOR his country”
“It s not blind people who are blind - It s those racist arseholes who see a colour with their eyes wide open, then have a fucking problem with it”
“do the rosa parks say no no do the rosa parks throw your hand in the air do the rosa parks say ... no no do the rosa parks tell them: that ain t fair”
“Like many types of criminals who may often be a product of ills that exist in their society, racists are often products of similar ills – they are the uninformed hand pulling a trigger of a gun handed down to them by a vicious system of indoctrination.”
“After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, Let the children come! and they ran from the trees toward her. Let your mothers hear you laugh, she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling. Then Let the grown men come, she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees. Let your wives and your children see you dance, she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet. Finally she called the women to her. Cry, she told them. For the living and the dead. Just cry. And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. Here, she said, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don t love your eyes; they d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. These they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face cause they don t love that either. You got to love it, you! And nom they ain t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver-love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”
“When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says give me liberty, or give me death, the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n*****, so there won t be any more like him.”
“If it is true that education is the main foundation of any society, it follows that the state of race in today’s America mirrors its education system. Therefore, America’s education needs serious examination and even remaking. It is a system that uses Blacks (and other marginalized people) as mere tokens. You see a meager quota of Black people (as employees or students) here and there to give the false impression of equity.”
“Name, religion, race and creed I wonder Who am I without these? My state of being or color of my skin I wonder What are the criteria of their categorizing?”
“Proximity to and even intimacy with BIPOC does not erase white privilege, unconscious bias, or complicity in the system of white supremacy. Being in a relationship with a BIPOC or having a biracial or multiracial child does not absolve a person with white privilege from the practice of antiracism.”
“The betrayal I now felt was greater because it had been perpetrated with the greatest of charm and courtesy.”
“When I was a child, no one ever said the words institutionalized racism. We hardly even said the word racism. I don t think I took a single class in college that talked about the physiological effects of years of personally medicated racism and internalized racism. This was before studies came out that showed that black women were four times more likely to die from childbirth, before people were talking about epigenetics and whether or not trauma was heritable. If those studies were out there, I never read them. If those classes were offered, I never took them. There was little interest in these ideas back then because there was, there *is,* little interest in the lives of black people. What I m saying is I didn t grow up with a language for, a way to explain, to parse out, my self-loathing. I grew up only with my part, my little throbbing stone of self-hate that I carried around with me to church, to school, to all those places in my life that worked, it seemed to me then, to affirm the idea that I was irreparably, fatally, wrong. I was a child who liked to be right.”
“Black is not evil. White is not trash. Brown is not illegal. Muslims don’t crash.”
“Allyship is not self-defined - our work and our efforts must be recognized by the people we seek to ally ourselves with.”
“If it is true that education is the main foundation of any society, it follows that the state of race in today’s America mirrors its education system.”
“Racists, then, are indoctrinated citizens who think they are entitled and superior to all others, and therefore capable of committing racism and violence against them. I contend that indoctrinated individuals are prisoners to the walls built around them that keep them indoctrinated. Therefore, instead of seeing them as ‘enemies’, we need to apply the same methods of reform some thinkers have suggested to the prison system in that rather than being purely punitive, prisons should aspire to rehabilitate prisoners in such ways that they may return to society with better attitude, understanding, and healthier minds and bodies (all things lacking in racist people, if you think about it deeply). Even more important is to build a society in such a way that there would be little need to have prison systems in the first place.”