“The diversity that excludes is not diversity, but an underlying prejudice with an acceptable label hiding its true dark self! Isaiah 5:20.”
“Black children have to lose their innocence before white children do. They can't afford the luxury of just reading about the impact of racism and white supremacy in a book, because they're living it every day. Because oftentimes it means life or death.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
“I thought I had everything until I found you.”
“Being someone who supports people of color and stands against racism isn't easy. Sometimes it requires sacrifice and having difficult conversations -- but that will never be as difficult as actually being impacted by racism.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
“I trust you, and that why I'll be honest and tell you that change is not easy. For some people, it won't matter that we're friends, or that you're friends with people who are like me.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
“Believing in diversity and inclusion does not mean we are building diverse and inclusive organizations.”
Source: The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias
“If there are inherent predispositions to intolerance of difference, if citizens so predisposed pop up in all societies, and if those predispositions are actually activated by the experience of living in a vibrant democracy, then freedom feeds fear that undermines freedom, and democracy is its own undoing. The overall lesson is clear: when it comes to democracy, less is often more, or at least more secure. We can do all the moralizing we like about how we want our ideal democratic citizens to be. But democracy is most secure, and tolerance is maximized, when we design systems to accommodate how people actually are. Because some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy. (p.335)”
Source: The Authoritarian Dynamic
“We need to do away with the idea of 'normal,' especially when it's used as a stand-in for 'mainstream' (whether that's white or anything else seen as such). Because at the heart of this difference between normal and abnormal is the belief that these so-called normal things are neutral.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
“I'm asking you to protect one another and learn from one another. I'm asking you to turn 'different' into the new normal, and then tell others to do the same.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person
“We have to learn to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, and find new ways to trust other people's words when they tell us and show us how we're hurting them. Because doing the right thing sometimes means putting the pain of others before our own, especially if we are part of creating it.”
Source: The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person