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

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" The most effective adaptation of racism over time is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people. "

" 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. "

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

" There is no human objectivity. "

" 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. "

" Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system. "

" 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. "

" White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People of color understand what it means to be white more than I ever will. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" If I have no idea how my race shapes me, I am probably not going to be open to any feedback about how your race shapes you. "

" 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. "

" Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels. These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all but which are actually only consistently afforded to white people. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" Like a nontechnical user trying to understand a technical problem, our racial illiteracy limits our ability to have meaningful conversations about race. "