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Ibram X. Kendi Quotes

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Famous Ibram X. Kendi Quotes

“White racists do not want to define racial hierarchy or policies that yield racial inequities as racist. To do so would be to define their ideas and policies as racist. Instead, they define policies not rigged for White people as racist. Ideas not centering White lives are racist. Beleaguered White racists who can’t imagine their lives not being the focus of any movement respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter.” Embattled police officers who can’t imagine losing their right to racially profile and brutalize respond with “Blue Lives Matter.”

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Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“The only thing wrong with White people is when they embrace racist ideas and policies and then deny their ideas and policies are racist. This is not to ignore that White people have massacred and enslaved millions of indigenous and African peoples, colonized and impoverished millions of people of color around the globe as their nations grew rich, all the while producing racist ideas that blame the victims. This is to say their history of pillaging is not the result of the evil genes or cultures of White people. There’s no such thing as White genes. We must separate the warlike, greedy, bigoted, and individualist cultures of modern empire and racial capitalism (more on that later) from the cultures of White people. They are not one and the same, as the resistance within White nations shows, resistance admittedly often tempered by racist ideas.”

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Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“As more Blacks broke free from the discriminatory barriers, society could find more ways to ignore the barriers themselves, and could even argue that something else was holding Black people back. With every Black first, the blame shifted to those Black people who failed to break away....If some could break away, the logic went, then all could, if they worked hard enough. Racist logic didn’t have to be logical; it just had to make common sense.”

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Book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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“Ironically, the actual “key to much in the Negro world” may have been the very opposite of Glazier’s formulation - the Negro may have been taking too much responsibility for the Negro’s problems, and therefore not doing enough to force the “white world” to end the discriminatory sources of the problems. Elite Blacks, raised on the strategy of uplift suasion and its racist conviction that every Negro represented the race - and therefore that the behavior of every single Black person was partially (or totally) responsible for racist ideas - had long policed each other. They had also policed the masses and the media portrayals of Blacks in their efforts to ensure that every single Black person presented himself or herself admirably before White Americans. They operated on the assumption that every single action before White America either confirmed or defied stereotypes, either helped or harmed the Negro race.”

RacismRacist IdeasUplift Suasion
Book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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