Antiracism Quotes

“White supremacists love what America used to be, even though America used to be--and still is--teeming with millions of struggling White people. White supremacists blame non-White people for the struggles of White people when any objective analysis of their plight primarily implicates the rich White Trumps they support.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!”
― Cornel West, Black Prophetic Fire

“Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“We were, each of us… at a crossroads of public and private dynamics which had brought us to this frame-worthy moment. I thought of the different currents and crosscurrents of history which had formed, merged, broken apart, and reformed to create the opportunity for us to give something essential to each other’s lives.”
― Aberjhani, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

“Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Being antiracist is not simply political correctness, it is proven science.”
― Robert Wald Sussman, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea

“The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism.”
― Sandra L. West, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“One line of King's speech in particular - that one day he might be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin - was seized upon by the white public because the words were seen to provide a simple and immediate solution to racial tensions: pretend that we don't see race, and racism will end. Color blindness was now promoted as the remedy for racism, with white people insisting that they didn't see race or, if they did, that it had no meaning to them.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“Το νησί μας δεν άργησε να βρει τον παλιό του ρυθμό. Οι γάτες πολλαπλασιάστηκαν. Ο φόβος έφυγε, το ίδιο και η καχυποψία. Θα έλεγε κανείς ότι δεν είχε συμβεί ποτέ ο μεγάλος διωγμός, ο φριχτός εκείνος κατατρεγμός. (...)
Όλα είναι τόσο ήρεμα..., τόσο γαλήνια..., τόσο ειρηνικά...
Πώς είναι δυνατόν να συνέβησαν όλα αυτά που συνέβησαν, αναρωτιέμαι, και προσπαθώ να πείσω τον εαυτό μου ότι ποτέ μα ποτέ δεν μπορεί, δεν πρόκειται να συμβεί πάλι κάτι τέτοιο.”
― Ευγένιος Τριβιζάς, The Last Black Cat

“We don't need white allies to help people of color to eradicate racism. Instead white people need people of color to be their allies in this fight.”
― Reverend Dr. Timothy E. Tyler

“A national act of procrastination does not eliminate the debt.”
― William A. Darity Jr.

“What’s the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.” But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist.” What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism. This may seem harsh, but it’s important at the outset that we apply one of the core principles of antiracism, which is to return the word “racist” itself back to its proper usage. “Racist” is not—as Richard Spencer argues—a pejorative. It is not the worst word in the English language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Singular-race makers push for the end of categorizing and identifying by race. They wag their fingers at people like me identifying as Black—but the unfortunate truth is that their well-meaning post-racial strategy makes no sense in our racist world. Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. Imagining away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imagining away classes in a capitalistic world—it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Anti-Semitism is one of the only forms of racial bigotry that punches upwards to perceived power”
― Adam Rutherford, How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

“Kendim için "insan" kelimesinden başka bir tanım kullanmayı reddediyorum. Bana kalırsa medeniyet ve insanlık yok olmasın diye gösterilen çabaların önündeki hızlı nüfus artışı dışındaki en büyük engel, insanların kendi aralarında durmadan küçük gruplara bölünme ve oluşan her yeni grubun da yalnız kendini yücelterek komşularını hakir görme alışkanlıklarıdır.”
― Isaac Asimov, It's Been a Good Life

“In a deck of playing cards, the reds are as important as the blacks.”
― Yohann Dafeu

“When we stop denying the duality of racist and antiracist, we can take an accurate accounting of the racial ideas and policies we support. For the better part of my life I held both racist and antiracist ideas, supported both racist and antiracist policies; I’ve been antiracist one moment, racist in many more moments.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Antiracist strategy fuses desegregation with a form of integration and racial solidarity.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The racism required to uphold white supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. There is no way you can inherent white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments, and not be racist. This does not mean you have hate in your heart. You may intend to treat everyone equally. But it does mean you have absorbed some f****d up shit regarding race and it will show itself in some f****d up ways.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race