The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture.
Robin DiangeloRead
One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.
Interpretation
Understanding racism requires an awareness of the dynamics between different social groups and their power structures.
This quote by Robin DiAngelo emphasizes that a comprehensive understanding of racism in the United States cannot be achieved without considering the power dynamics between different racial and social groups. It highlights the importance of recognizing how these power relations influence societal behaviors, systems, and attitudes towards race.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about systemic racism in a classroom setting.
The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture.
Whites often respond defensively when linked to other whites as a group or 'accused' of collectively benefiting from racism, because as individuals, each white person is 'different' from any other white person and expects to be seen as such.
One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in.
You have to be in accountable relationships across race. Accountable means that they're authentic, they're sustained, and that you do talk about racism, and you are able to be given feedback.
This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sources - schools, textbooks, media - don't provide us with the multiple perspectives we need.
White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.
Being offended by freedom of speech should never be regarded as a justification for violence.
The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good. Death and life. Everywhere, opposites.
O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through the sea! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.
I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.
He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.
Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind
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