Antiracism Quotes

“It’s not just a matter of having lost the land and the wealth that came with it. It’s a matter of the fact that we lost a way of life that we should have been able to pass on to our children and to their children, but which we can’t because of what was taken from us. (Harris Neck, Georgia native Wilson Moran as quoted by Aberjhani in The American Poet Who Went Home Again)”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“[Speaking with John McWhorter]
I take umbrage at the lionisation of lightweight, empty-suited, empty-headed motherfuckers like Ibram X. Kendi. Who couldn't carry my book bag. He hasn't read a fucking thing. If you ask him what Nietzsche said, he would have no idea. He's an unserious, superficial, empty-suited, lightweight - he's not our equal, not even close.”
― Glenn C. Loury

“Leadership has never been an exact science. But it has always found itself particularly challenged when tasked with elevating one segment of a society onto a level more politically, socially, and economically equitable with another.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“In fact, the most realistic approach to solidarity is one that assumes that sometimes it simply isn’t your turn to be the focus of the conversation.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“This Booker T. Washington syndrome permeated every aspect of the education I received in Birmingham. Work hard and you will be rewarded. A corollary of this principle was that the road would be harder and rockier for Black people than for their white counterparts. Our teachers warned us that we would have to steel ourselves for hard labor and more hard labor, sacrifices and more sacrifices. Only this would prove that we were serious about overcoming all the obstacles before us. It often struck me they were speaking of these obstacles as if they would always be there, part of the natural order of things, rather than the product of a system of racism, which we could eventually overturn.”
― Angela Y. Davis, An Autobiography

“All forms of racism are overt if our antiracist eyes are open to seeing racist policy in racial inequity.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Race and racism are power constructs of the modern world. For roughly two hundred thousand years, before race and racism were constructed in the fifteenth century, humans saw color but did not group the colors into continental races, did not commonly attach negative and positive characteristics to those colors and rank the races to justify racial inequity, to reinforce racist power and policy. Racism is not even six hundred years old. It’s a cancer that we’ve caught early.

But racism is one of the fastest-spreading and most fatal cancers humanity has ever known. It is hard to find a place where its cancer cells are not dividing and multiplying. There is nothing I see in our world today, in our history, giving me hope that one day antiracists will win the fight, that one day the flag of antiracism will fly over a world of equity. What gives me hope is a simple truism. Once we lose hope, we are guaranteed to lose. But if we ignore the odds and fight to create an antiracist world, then we give humanity a chance to one day survive, a chance to live in communion, a chance to be forever free.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Asking antiracists to change their perspective on racism can be as destabilizing as asking racists to change their perspective on the races. Antiracists can be as doctrinaire in their view of racism as racists can be in their view of not-racism. How can antiracists ask racists to open their minds and change when we are closed-minded and unwilling to change?”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Every single person actually has the power to protest racist and antiracist policies, to advance them, or, in some small way, to stall them.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“But before we can treat, we must believe. Believe all is not lost for you and me and our society. Believe in the possibility that we can strive to be antiracist from this day forward. Believe in the possibility that we can transform our societies to be antiracist from this day forward. Racist power is not godly. Racist policies are not indestructible. Racial inequities are not inevitable. Racist ideas are not natural to the human mind.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The root problem—from Prince Henry to President Trump—has always been the self-interest of racist power. Powerful economic, political, and cultural self-interest—the primitive accumulation of capital in the case of royal Portugal and subsequent slave traders—has been behind racist policies. Powerful and brilliant intellectuals in the tradition of Gomes de Zurara then produced racist ideas to justify the racist policies of their era, to redirect the blame for their era’s racial inequities away from those policies and onto people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Antiracism calls us to live a life full of intentional acts, to come to new understandings and commit to new ways to live justly--not to repeat patterns of oppression. Two of the biggest obstacles to becoming antiracist are nostalgia and convenience. Nostalgia will prohibit us from seeing multiple perspectives, from thinking critically about the harm we are causing because we are centering our own comfort. Choosing to support racist authors, actors, and production companies because we have warm and fuzzy feelings about them is perpetuating racism.”
― Britt Hawthorne, Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

“This problematizing of gender places her, in my view, out of the traditional symbolics of female gender, and it is our task to make a place for this different social subject. In doing so, we are less interested in joining the ranks of gendered femaleness than gaining the insurgent ground as female social subject. Actually claiming the monstrosity (of a female with the potential to "name"), which her culture imposes in blindness, 'Sapphire' might after all rewrite a radically different text for female empowerment.”
― Hortense Spillers, Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe : An American Grammar Book

“Courage is the strength to do what is right in the face of fear, as the anonymous philosopher tells us. I gain insight into what's right from antiracist ideas. I gain strength from fear. While many people are fearful of what could happen if they resist, I am fearful of what could happen if I don't resist, I am fearful of cowardice. Cowardice is the inability to amass the strength to do what is right in the face of fear. And racist power has been terrorizing cowardice into us for generations.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“We can paint our life with the color of our choice. But there are people who have only one color, they don’t have any choice.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“The rhetoric of black power corrupted the white left and the black left alike, substituting a politics of the media for the civil rights struggles earlier waged in deadly earnest in the South. As the black power rhetoreticians co-opted the civil rights movement, they also captivated white liberals who sought to appease the guilt associated with “white skin privilege” by adopting the gestures and language of black militancy. Both whites and blacks embraced radical style in place of radical substance.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“What people are looking for is humanism. Human is a better word than any ‘ism.’ It’s about being human and treating each other with respect. With respect there’s
the possibility of doing something that betters the quality of life for everyone. But right now it’s about exploitation and corporate greed. It has nothing to do with just everyday folks.”
― Emory Douglas, Zapantera Negra: An Artistic Encounter Between Black Panthers and Zapatistas

“True equity starts with ensuring that everyone has access to the most basic of needs.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“It is never the privileged outsider who gets to decide when they’re a good ally. Especially not if they want to use their status as an ally to excuse whatever they have done that has offended someone in the group they claim to be supporting.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“We don't need perfect antiracist parents; we need parents willing to practice antiracism with curiosity and commitment.”
― Britt Hawthorne, Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

“Most important, whenever our children respond with feelings of guilt, or even shame, we can respond with, 'I love you anyway.' The way you respond to your children in the tough times will become their inner voice later in life.”
― Britt Hawthorne, Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

“Children of the global majority experience systemic racism and also interpersonal racism, and the latter is coming from their white peers.”
― Britt Hawthorne, Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

“Look out, also, for the many powerful stories that depict us all as we truly are- human.”
― Sonja Cherry-Paul, Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You

“Liberal antiracists [...] talk of "hate speech" and "hate crimes", on the assumption that oppresive cruelty is the behavioural expression of a hateful disposition - ignoring the corporate executives, asset managers, lawmakers, government officials, judges, police officers, prison guards, military personnel and immigration officers who, without attitudes of hatred, routinely and calmly operate infrastructures of racist violence, in the name of security and profit. By relocating racism to the unconscious mind, liberal antiracists end up absolving the institutions most responsible for racist practices.”
― Arund Kundnani

“Liberal antiracists [...] talk of "hate speech" and "hate crimes", on the assumption that oppresive cruelty is the behavioural expression of a hateful disposition - ignoring the corporate executives, asset managers, lawmakers, government officials, judges, police officers, prison guards, military personnel and immigration officers who, without attitudes of hatred, routinely and calmly operate infrastructures of racist violence, in the name of security and profit. By relocating racism to the unconscious mind, liberal antiracists end up absolving the institutions most responsible for racist practices.”
― Arun Kundnani

“Es geht für weiße Kinder eher darum zu verstehen, dass sie weiß sind und welche gesellschaftliche Bedeutung dies hat. Bei Kindern, die negativ von Rassismus betroffen sind, geht es vornehmlich um Empowerment, also die Stärkung ihres Selbstwertgefühls.”
― Olaolu Fajembola, Tebogo Nimindé-Dundadengar, Gib mir mal die Hautfarbe

“Disruptive empathy is...[when we] “take in all that appears to be ‘utterly other’ -- even when, or especially when, the ‘Otherness’ appears in ourselves” (Walker, 2020, p. 66).”
― Maureen Walker, When Getting Along Is Not Enough: Reconstructing Race in Our Lives and Relationships

“Disruptive empathy is a process of engagement that facilitates movement toward a level of open-heartedness and open-mindedness that can take in all that appears to be ‘utterly other’ -- even when, or especially when, the ‘Otherness’ appears in ourselves. … [W]e have to loosen our attachment to the narratives about self and other. We must be willing to be surprised and accept the part of ourselves we previously found embarrassing or shameful.
(p. 66)”
― Maureen Walker, When Getting Along Is Not Enough: Reconstructing Race in Our Lives and Relationships

“We all carry around a Model Me identity of how we want to be seen in the world. Capable, smart, attractive, and yes, empathic are all qualities most of us aspire to embody...a fixed and idealized image. ...

The Not Me we all carry around is a cartoonish devil that sits on our sholder, making us say or do the things we might otherwise find distasteful. It's the voice that says or does things about which we're likely to feel embarrassed or ashamed. When the Not Me voice emerges -- usually out of nowhere -- is when we need to listen carefully."

(pp. 66-67)”
― Maureen Walker

“Anders hoped he looked more brave than he felt, and the three of them were armed but they stopped when they saw him, a few paces away, and they stared at him with contempt and fascination, and Anders thought the one he knew stared at him with enthusiasm too, like this was special for him, personal, and Anders could perceive how self-righteous they were, how certain that he, Anders, was in the wrong, that he was the bandit here, trying to rob them, they who had been robbed already and had nothing left, just their whiteness, the worth of it, and they would not let him take that, not him nor anyone else.”
― Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man