Denial Of Racism Quotes

Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society. It is even more irrational to believe that it is whites who are at the receiving end of discrimination. Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy. ~ Robin DiAngelo

I was co-leading a workshop with an African American man. A white participant said to him, "I don't see race; I don't see you as black." My co-trainer's response was, "Then how will you see racism?" He then explained to her that he was black, he was confident that she could see this, and that his race meant that he had a very different experience in life than she did. If she were ever going to understand or challenge racism, she would need to acknowledge this difference. Pretending that she did not noticed that he was black was not helpful to him in any way, as it denied his reality - indeed, it refused his reality - and kept hers insular and unchallenged. This pretense that she did not notice his race assumed that he was "just like her," and in so doing, she projected her reality onto him. For example, I feel welcome at work so you must too; I have never felt that my race mattered, so you must feel that yours doesn't either. But of course, we do see the race of other people, and race holds deep social meaning for us. ~ Robin DiAngelo

He was not safe. I wasn't angry, I was heartbroken.

We couldn't talk about the ways in which race and racism impacted my life, because he was unwilling to even acknowledge the racism that was impacting my life and he was unable to prioritize my safety over his comfort - which meant that we couldn't talk about me. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

The denial of racism is a form of racism itself. ~ Tim Wise

All lives matter is an intellectual luxury cooked up by closet philosophers, whereas black lives matter is an actual manifestation of the value of life through tangible human actions, which is moulding a world where all lives truly matter, not theoretically, but actually. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Structural racism amounts collective effects of bias. It's the kind of racism that has the power to drastically impact people's life chances. ~ Reni Eddo-Lodge

For a full minute, I held my breath. For sixty seconds, maybe more, I existed in an idiotic state of self-denial from completely free, available, and fresh oxygen. I like oxygen. It's one of my favorite elements. Its absence was not helping with my lightheaded situation.
And then he did it. Eddie Wixim touched his lips to mine, and for the first time in my life I wasn't thinking with my brain." Anna Wixim, OR NOT TO BE ~ Laura Lanni

I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Our denial of our weakness is as profitable to our opponents as our unawareness of our strength. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Is it only when you're in love with another person that you see them as they really are? And in the ordinary way, when you're not in love, you see only a fragmented version of that being? Because when you're in love with someone, you do indeed see them as a divine being. And suppose that's what they are, truly. And your eyes have, by your beloved, been opened. If you should be so fortunate as to encounter this spiritual experience, it seems to me to be a total denial of life to refuse it. ~ Alan W. Watts

But they also awarded a quite respectable 55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness. ~ Marc Morris

I'm just thinking. I guess I'm a little worried about our current political climate. The country, the state, and even the city . . . we are very divided, maybe more divided than any time in recent history. The silent underbelly of racist attitudes has become far more emboldened. ~ Mark M. Bello

Hell had been his Vietnam. It had stamped its mark on him for all eternity, and no amount of denial or self-imposed ignorance was going to change it. Ever. ~ Joe Schreiber

To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

When a black Jacksonian looks about his home community, he sees a city of over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, or fireman. ~ Medgar Evers

Atheist's denial of God's existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist's claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God's existence. ~ Paul Copan

I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people's minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten. ~ Christopher Hawke

Attracted to one of the Silent?
His mouth set in a grim line. He'd cut off his own balls before he accepted that. ~ Nalini Singh

eventually you just stop saying that. because you realize you're an idiot. ~ Chris Arnade

A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most People live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside. ~ Dean Koontz

Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things. Now the external reality matches their feeling; they really are better than the rest and maybe they'll even be remembered as such. These are the ambitious people, the overachievers. These are also, however, the people who go on these abominable talk shows where they can trade their psychoses for exposure on that box, modernity's ultimate achievement. Not that this tact, being ambitious, is not the preferred course of action. The reason is it's the equivalent of sticking your neck out which we all know is dangerous. Instead many act like they have no ambition whatsoever. Their necks come back in and they're safe. Only problem is now they're at everyone else's level, which we've seen is untenable. The remedy of course is that everyone else needs to be sunk. This helps explain racism's enduring popularity. If I myself don't appear to be markedly superior to everyone else at least I'm part of the better race, country, religion et cetera. This in turn reflects well on my individual worth. There are other options, of course. For example, you can constantly bemoan others' lack of moral worth by extension elevating yourself. Think of the average person's reaction to our clients. Do these people strike you as so truly righteous that they are viscerally pained by our cl ~ Sergio De La Pava

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

BUT TRANSFORMERS ROTF(L) SUCKS BECAUSE IT IS A TERRIBLY TOLD STORY WITH ENDLESS BLOAT, NO MOMENTUM, PAPER THIN CHARACTERIZATION, NO CHARACTER CONSISTENCY, NO ACTUAL RELATIONSHIPS, POORLY ARTICULATED CONFLICTS, ZERO SENSE OF DRAMA, A WEIRD-AS-HELL TONE, AND A WHOLE LOT OF SEXISM AND RACISM TO BOOT. ~ Film Crit Hulk!

Change is inevitable. It happens every day, whether we notice it or not. Some people like change. They embrace it with every ounce of their being and never look back. Others hide from it, hoping if they pretend not to notice they can live in their perfect bubble of denial, pretending the world around them is exactly the way it was the day before. ~ Justine Elvira

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. ~ Henry David Thoreau

It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist. ~ Clarence Page

You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. ~ Malcolm X

My beliefs are now one hundred percent against racism and segregation in any form and I also believe that we don't judge a person by the color of his skin but rather by his deeds. ~ Malcolm X

Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city
a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation. ~ Jordan Flaherty

The United States is like one big jail for Black people, because we're locked into a mentality and a mindset that limits our potential. It has us against us. ~ Chuck D

Darwinism met with such overwhelming success because it provided, on the basis of inheritance, the ideological weapons for race and well as class rule and could be used for, as well as against, race discrimination. Politically speaking, Darwinism as such was neutral, and it has led, indeed, to all kinds of pacifism and cosmopolitanism as well as to the sharpest forms of imperialistic ideologies. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, Darwinism was still almost exclusively in the hands of the utilitarian anti-colonial party in England. And the first philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer, who treated sociology as part of biology, believed natural selection to benefit the evolution of mankind and to result in everlasting peace. For political discussion, Darwinism offered two important concepts: the struggle for existence with optimistic assertion of the necessary and automatic "survival of the fittest," and the indefinite possibilities which seemed to lie in the evolution of man out of animal life and which started the new "science" of eugenics. ~ Hannah Arendt

Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris. ~ Michael Pollan

I want to go home."
His first reaction was to shout, "Nay!" It took all his restraint not to shout the denial. A cold fist of dread clenched his throat and squeezed relentlessly. She wasn't happy. Even a fool could see that she was miserable. ~ Maya Banks

The history written, taught, and sworn to as 'the unvarnished truth' by the establishment - any establishment, left or right, conservative or liberal, capitalist or socialist or fascist - is generally revisionist, narrow in perspective, monolithic, and agenda-driven. In the worst case, it consists of one part denial and one part propaganda - in other words, a self-serving pack of lies. ~ Thomas W. Knowles

Nothing will ever be solved if we wallow in the darkness of denial. ~ Carlos Wallace

When white people accuse you of "pulling the race card"―don't even deny it! Tell them; "Yeah, it's the only card I've got while you enjoy a full deck. ~ Sasha Scarr

It's easy to decide that the other side's real motivation on an issue is prejudice or selfishness or greed. And sometimes, unflattering descriptions may in fact be true. Unabashed racism or sexism or selfishness or cruelty may in fact be someone's primary motivator. But unless they see themselves as unabashedly racist or sexist or selfish or cruel, there's still an unanswered question, the question of what they think their motivations are. There's nearly always more to the story. ~ Justin Lee

... in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people. Somehow it's been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man. ~ Elbert Guillory

There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education. ~ Richard Mitchell

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I couldn't articulate how the name made me feel. Shawn had meant it to humiliate me, to lock me in time, into an old idea of myself. But far from fixing me in place, that word transported me. Every time he said it - "Hey Nigger, raise the boom" or "Fetch me a level, Nigger" - I returned to the university, to that auditorium, where I had watched human history unfold and wondered at my place in it. The stories of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were called to my mind every time Shawn shouted, "Nigger, move to the next row." I saw their faces superimposed on every purlin Shawn welded into place that summer, so that by the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested.
I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way. But something had shifted nonetheless. I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others - because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward. ~ Tara Westover

The first day without you is painful in a way that is almost exquisite. I imagine quitting smokers must feel like this, or crash-dieters - the early determination, where the loss of what you have given up is replaced with the adrenaline of denial. ~ Louise Doughty

REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It is with great satisfaction that I learned of the adoption by consensus of the Durban Declaration against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and the intolerance associated with it ~ Lionel Jospin

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! ~ Vera Nazarian

Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

It's not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it's hard work, but it's the price you pay for owning everything. ~ Scott Woods