Racialized Quotes

Why is the integrity of the literary canon everywhere articulated in terms of its imagined integration to a nation-state as well as a racialized civilization? What would it mean to seek justification for literary studies on the basis of aesthetic value rather than the contestable presumption that literary canons function as the preeminent repositories of national cultures and/or racialized civilizations? ~ David Lloyd

Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come to deny the evils of mass incarceration. Denial is facilitated by persistent racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by racialized media imagery, and by the ease of changing one's perception of reality simply by changing television channels. There is little reason to doubt the prevailing "common sense" that black and brown men have been locked up en masse merely in response to crime rates when one's sources of information are mainstream media outlets. ~ Michelle Alexander

A woman of color formation might decide to work around immigration issues. This political commitment is not based on the specific histories of racialized communities or its constituent members, but rather constructs an agenda agreed upon by all who are a part of it. In my opinion, the most exciting potential of women of color formations resides in the possibility of politicizing this identity – basing the identity on politics rather than the politics on identity. ~ Angela Y. Davis

If you look at slavery across all human history, and you sort of strip away the packaging, whether it's racialized or religious-based, and you look at the actual core of the slavery, it's one person completely controlling another one. ~ Kevin Bales

Mistaken belief that racial animus is necessary for the creation and maintenance of racialized systems of social control is the most important reason that we, as a nation, have remained in deep denial. ~ Michelle Alexander

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.' ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

The police pull up in back of my car and run my plates - they don't see you as you are; they see you through a racialized negative gaze. I think the best thing is not to internalize it too much, or it'll make you crazy because you know it's going to happen again. ~ Mark Bradford

While such charges may strike the reasonable among us as the very definition of lunacy, there is a reason they were made, a logic to them that went unchallenged within the echo chamber that is the American conservative right. Simply put, within a politics of white resentment and victimology, Hitler-laced rants work. After all, Hitler was not just a fascist, but is understood to have been a racial fascist: one whose dictatorial and murderous schemes were directed at a distinctly racialized "other." So to make the black man atop the U.S. political system into Hitler is to plant the idea in white minds that he too will be a racial fascist. And if that is the case, the question quite obviously arises, which race will he be coming for? Should we be scared? They certainly hope so, and are counting on it. ~ Tim Wise

I'm worried about well-meaning white folks, who in their effort to lead a social justice conversation as my allies, make missteps that continue to reinforce oppression in racialized communities, and do a disservice to mainstream feminist social justice work, which should surely be intersectional as fuck by now. ~ Anonymous

...we have to be aware of the power and importance of organizing not just around identity, but the materiality of daily life, which still, in many respects, is racialized for people of color. You build from that, but you have a grander social vision that transcends it and recognizes the strengths and limitations that are drawn from the particularity of identity. ~ Manning Marable