“That which a team does not want to discuss, it most needs to discuss.”
Source: The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture
“How do your trade show staff dynamics impact booth visitors?
Selecting the right booth staff is critical to a successful show. Visitors can quickly tell if your team is working together or if each person is doing their own thing. And, if your staff isn’t engaging effectively, potential buyers won’t stick around long enough to see how great your product or service really is.”
Source: Trade Show 411: The Essential Guide to Exhibiting Like a Pro
“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.”
Source: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
“For those of us who work to raise the racial consciousness of whites, simply getting whites to acknowledge that our race gives us advantages is a major effort. The defensiveness, denial, and resistance are deep.”
Source: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
“She is the sun that circles my planet, warming me from the surface to my core. And she’s all I can ever ask for.”
Source: The Days with Rain
“Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn't about manners; it's about a methodology of controlling the conversation.”
Source: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
“To continue reproducing racial inequality, the system only needs for white people to be really nice and carry on – to smile at people of color, to go to lunch with them on occasion. To be clear, being nice is generally a better policy than being mean. But niceness does not bring racism to the table and will not keep it on the table when so many of us who are white want it off. Niceness does not break with white solidarity and white silence. In fact, naming racism is often seen as not nice, triggering white fragility.”
“When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it's easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination.”
Source: I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
“How can I say that if you are white, your opinions on racism are most likely ignorant, when I don't even know you? I can say so because nothing in mainstream US culture gives us the information we need to have the nuanced understanding of arguable the most complex and enduring social dynamic of the last several hundred years.”
Source: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
“It is said that for every “Aha moment” that a white person experiences in regard to racism, a person of color has paid a tremendous emotional price. Yes, the lessons that we teach come at an extraordinarily high cost to us.”
Source: While I Run This Race