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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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!' "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "