Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all. "

Related Quotes:

" Racism has two primary functions: the oppression of people of color, which most people recognize, but also the simultaneous elevation of white people. You can't hold one group down without lifting the other up. "

" I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. "

" I have spent years studying what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race. "

" As a social concept, 'white' is profound in its meaning. It means people who either come from or appear to come from Europe, but it's necessarily a construct of oppression. "

" What I do used to be called 'diversity training,' then 'cultural competency' and now, 'anti-racism.' These terms are really useful for periods of time, but then they get coopted, and people build all this baggage around them, and you have to come up with new terms, or else people won't engage. "

" The language of violence that many whites use to describe anti-racist endeavors is not without significance, as it is another example of how white fragility distorts reality. "

" The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how. "

" In the U.S., while individual whites might be against racism, they still benefit from their group's control. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won't be one of them. "

" Human beings can only make sense of the world through the lens they were socialized to make sense of it through. "

" Whites have not had to build the cognitive or affective skills or develop the stamina that would allow for constructive engagement across racial divides. "

" The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture. "

" While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group. "

" I think our everyday coded language around 'good neighborhoods' and 'bad neighborhoods' is what allows for tremendous violence to happen... When you label a neighborhood 'bad' and avoid it, then you don't know and don't see what goes on there. And there's no human face to interrupt that narrative. "

" We whites who position ourselves as liberal often opt to protect what we perceive as our moral reputationsrather than recognize or change our participation in systems of inequity and domination. "

" White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. "

" For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we're good, moral people, we can't be racist - we don't engage in those acts. "

" While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power. "

" Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to racial prejudice and the personal actions that result. But this definition does little to explain how racial hierarchies are consistently reproduced. "

" For a lot of white people, just suggesting that being white has meaning will trigger a deep, defensive response. And that defensiveness serves to maintain both our comfort and our positions in a racially inequitable society from which we benefit. "

" Whites often respond defensively when linked to other whites as a group or 'accused' of collectively benefiting from racism, because as individuals, each white person is 'different' from any other white person and expects to be seen as such. "

" I don't believe it's humanly possible to be free of bias. "

" Most white people cannot answer the question, 'What does it mean to be white?' with any depth or complexity. "

" There's a lot of ways that white women undermine women of color, and black women in particular. "

" It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews. "

" As part of my work, I teach, lead and participate in affinity groups, facilitate workshops, and mentor other whites on recognizing and interrupting racism in our lives. "

" There is no human objectivity. "

" We have always policed the bodies of people of color, and black people in particular. The Jim Crow South is a classic example. White flight in the North. School segregation. Gerrymandering. "

" As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral. "

" White fragility doesn't always manifest in overt ways; silence and withdrawal are also functions of fragility. "

" White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives. "