- Prejudice
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- Nov 07, 2020
Racism Quotes
Honest reflections on bias and prejudice.
One quote here describes an uncomfortable, secondhand kind of racism, standing among friends when a remark slips out that would never be said at a family gathering. Another distills the issue to its root, arguing that any belief in one group's superiority over another leads directly to racism.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Change
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Erupt
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
The most effective adaptation of racism over time is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.
- Go
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- Nov 07, 2020
Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Question
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- Nov 07, 2020
The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how.
- Group
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- Nov 07, 2020
While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group.
- Nov 07, 2020
One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.
- Focus
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Collectively
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020