Antiracism Quotes

“Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“Knowledge planted in truth grows in truth.
Strength born of peace loses nothing to hate.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“It's not that there are no differences between human and non-human animals, any more than there are no differences between black people and white people, freeborn citizens and slaves, men and women, Jews and gentiles, gays or heterosexuals. The question is rather: are they morally relevant differences? This matters because morally catastrophic consequences can ensue when we latch on to a real but morally irrelevant difference between sentient beings.”
― David Pearce

“Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with bigotry of all kinds, justifying all kinds of inequities by victim blaming; heightening exploitation and misplaced hate; spurring mass shootings, arms races, and demagogues who polarize nations, shutting down essential organs of democracy; and threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change. In the United States, the metastatic cancer has been spreading, contracting, and threatening to kill the American body as it nearly did before its birth, as it nearly did during its Civil War. But how many people stare inside the body of their nations' racial inequities, their neighborhoods' racial inequities, their occupations' racial inequities, their institutions' racial inequities, and flatly deny that their policies are racist? They flatly deny that racial inequity is a signpost of racist policy. They flatly deny the racist policy as they use racist ideas to justify the racial inequity. They flatly deny the cancer of racism as the cancer cells spread and literally threaten their own lives and the lives of the people and spaces and places they hold dear. The popular conception of denial--like the popular strategy of suasion--is suicidal.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“To truly be antiracist is to be feminist. To truly be feminist is to be antiracist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“What if we measure the radicalism of speech by how radically it transforms open-minded people, by how the speech liberates the antiracist power within? What if we measure the conservatism of speech by how intensely it keeps people the same, keeps people enslaved by their racist ideas and fears, conserving their inequitable society?”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Moral and educational suasion breathes the assumption that racist minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise. Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967. Look at the soaring support for Obamacare after its passage in 2010. Racist policymakers drum up fear of antiracist policies through racist ideas, knowing if the policies are implemented, the fears they circulate will never come to pass. Once the fears do not come to pass, people will let down their guards as they enjoy the benefits. Once they clearly benefit, most Americans will support and become the defenders of the antiracist policies they once feared.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Antiracist policies cannot eliminate class racism without anticapitalist policies. Anticapitalism cannot eliminate class racism without antiracism.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“…the way people act around you, it changes what you are, who you are.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Anders had decided he would talk to him, finally after all these years, he would stop being nice to him, which was not really being nice to him, it was just treating the cleaning guy like a puppy, a dog, that you give a couple pats to, and call out good boy, and instead Anders would talk to him, and see what he had to say, not because Anders was better than before, but because the way Anders saw stuff was not the same, because the cleaning guy could probably tell Anders a few things, and Anders could probably stand to learn.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“The clerk was a beautiful man with delicate brown eyes and big brown hands, and he had been beautiful when he was a boy too, but not this beautiful, and she asked him if he was happy for having changed, and he said his changing colour had been only one of several changes he had been through recently, it all flowed together, he had gotten married the week before her brother's funeral, yes married, he repeated to her expression of surprise, his own expression no less surprised, as though he could barely believe it himself, and he was happy in his marriage, and he loved his husband, but her brother was there too, with him, and he would always be there, he knew that now, he had known it at the funeral, he had married and found a love and lost a love and changed colour, and which of these was most significant for him he could not say, but probably, probably it was not the colour.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”
― Diriye Osman

“Trovo sempre sconcertante quando qualcuno mi dice: «Non bisogna credere a tutto ciò che si vede sui social network, perché spesso non corrispondono alla realtà». Il problema dell'autenticità non è capire quanto il mio profilo corrisponda alla realtà, ma quanto la presunta realtà corrisponda davvero a me, a quello che sono.
Se una persona con un handicap crea un'identità digitale che l'handicap non lo ha e stabilisce relazioni, sta producendo una realtà falsata o ne sta ipotizzando una piú autentica rispetto a sé? Se una persona che appartiene a un'etnia razzializzata si inventa un'identità digitale grazie alla quale le diventano possibili legami con persone che altrimenti non si relazionerebbero mai a lei, sta mentendo o sta producendo una distorsione creativa nella società razzista in cui vive? Se una donna nata in un corpo maschile aggira la disforia di genere attraverso un'identità digitale che corrisponde al genere in cui si riconosce, possiamo parlare di inganno oppure siamo davanti a una realtà piú sincera? Dalla risposta a queste domande dipende molta della nostra capacità di restare uman3 negli ambiti sempre piú postumani del tempo che le nostre vite stanno già attraversando.”
― Michela Murgia, God Save the Queer: Catechismo femminista

“Sister Rosa, Malcolm X and Dr. King
Showed us we got power, showed what changes we could bring
To change society you have gotta change the law
Their bodies may be gone but their spirits still live on”
― Bobby Gillespie

“Racism is the ultimate societal bug, spreading its nasty influence far and wide. But here's the kicker: unlike those pesky biological viruses that have us reaching for hand sanitizer, this one's entirely curable. All it takes is a potent mix of education to disinfect ignorance, a hefty shot of empathy to build immunity, and a collective action booster to wipe it out for good. It's like a global vaccine campaign, but instead of needles, we're armed with open minds and big hearts.”
― Life is Positive

“Antirassismusarbeit beginnt mit Verstehen, nicht mit Abstreiten oder Besserwissen.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Wir müssen aufhören, Rassismus mit Böse-Sein gleichzusetzen.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Du bist kein schlechter Mensch, sondern ein Mensch, der mit einem rassistischen System konfrontiert ist und deshalb nicht davor gefeit ist, selbst rassistisch zu agieren.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Rassismus- und Diskriminierungserfahrungen sind keine Schicksalsschläge.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Rassismus ist ein Gerüst historisch gewachsener Machtstrukturen, von dem du als weiße Person profitierst.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Ob ein Wort diskriminierend ist, hängt vielmehr davon ab, in welcher Art und Weise es verwendet wird, wo, von wem und um was zu bewirken.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Viele Fragen sind keine Fragen, sondern Reproduktionen der eigenen Vorurteile und des antimuslimischen Rassismus.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Afrohaare sind tatsächlich aufgeladen, nicht mit Strom, aber mit vielen politischen Bedeutungen.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Das Gesetz unterscheidet im Wortlaut nicht zwischen Hautfarben, bildet aber trotzdem die Grundlage für strukturellen Rassismus.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Egal wie sehr wir uns mit dem Thema Rassismus bereits auseinandergesetzt haben, es gibt bei diesem komplexen Thema immer etwas dazuzulernen.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Die Bekleidung der Frauen wird sanktioniert, als sei (k)ein Stück Stoff das Problem und nicht die anderen, die darauf reagieren.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“Stereotype helfen uns nicht, Menschen besser einzuschätzen, sie verhindern vielmehr, dass wir die wahre Persönlichkeit eines Menschen erkennen.”
― Black Voices, War das jetzt rassistisch?: 22 Anti-Rassismus-Tipps für den Alltag

“What seem to be vestiges of the Jim Crow world in a sense are just that. But passage of the old order's segregationist trappings throws into relief the deeper reality that what appeared and was experienced as racial hierarchy was also class hierarchy. Now blacks occupy positions in the socioeconomic order previously available only to whites, and whites occupy those previously identified with blacks. And the dynamics of superordination and subordination, patterns of appropriation and distribution, and dominant understandings of which material interests should drive policy remain much as they were.

This underscores the point that the core of the Jim Crow order was a class system rooted in employment and production relations that were imposed, stabilized, regulated and naturalized through a regime of white supremacist law, practice, custom, rhetoric, and ideology. Defeating the white supremacist regime was a tremendous victory for social justice and egalitarian interests. At the same time, that victory left the undergirding class system untouched and in practical terms affirmed it. That is the source of that bizarre sensation I felt in the region a generation after the defeat of Jim Crow. The larger takeaway from this reality is that a simple racism/anti-racism framework isn't adequate for making sense of the segregation era, and it certainly isn't up to the task of interpreting what has succeeded it or challenging the forms of inequality and injustice that persist.”
― Adolph L. Reed Jr., The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives

“Resistance to the possibility of domination has to be learned.”
― bell hooks, Outlaw Culture