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

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" 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. "

" Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society... Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 antidote to white fragility is ongoing and lifelong and includes sustained engagement, humility, and education. "

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

" Most people, certainly faculty, believe that if they're for social justice, it's automatically integrated into whatever they do. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" White people are very wily when it comes to race. We will do everything that we can to get out from under the idea of race. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Many of us actively working to interrupt racism continually hear complaints about the 'gotcha' culture of white anti-racism. There is a stereotype that we are looking for every incident we can find so we can spring out, point our fingers, and shout, 'You're a racist!' "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Most whites live, grow, play, learn, love, work and die primarily in social and geographic racial segregation. Yet, our society does not teach us to see this as a loss. Pause for a moment and consider the magnitude of this message: We lose nothing of value by having no cross-racial relationships. "

" You have to be in accountable relationships across race. Accountable means that they're authentic, they're sustained, and that you do talk about racism, and you are able to be given feedback. "

" 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. "