Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In aversive racism, the concept of racism is abhorrent to that person. But they're filled with racist conditioning and bias, as we all are. Because that conflicts with their identity as good people, they suppress it and are even more in denial about it. They are even more likely to erupt in defensiveness if it gets called out. "

Related Quotes:

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

Robin DiAngelo

Race

Society

Studying

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

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

" I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sources - schools, textbooks, media - don't provide us with the multiple perspectives we need. "

" One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we've caused. "

" The default of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. I mean, that's what it does; that's what it's been doing for hundreds of years. "

" 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. "

" This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time - that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not 'doing.' "

" One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations. "

" Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward. "

" One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in. "

" A fundamental but very challenging part of my work is moving white people from an individual understanding of racism - i.e. only some people are racist and those people are bad - to a structural understanding. "

" While having friends of color is better than not having them, it doesn't change the overall system or prevent racism from surfacing in our relationships. The societal default is white superiority, and we are fed a steady diet of it 24/7. To not actively seek to interrupt racism is to internalize and accept it. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "