“Racist” and “antiracist” are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other. We can unknowingly strive to be a racist. We can knowingly strive to be an antiracist. Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”
Source: How to Be an Antiracist
“Race and racism are power constructs of the modern world. For roughly two hundred thousand years, before race and racism were constructed in the fifteenth century, humans saw color but did not group the colors into continental races, did not commonly attach negative and positive characteristics to those colors and rank the races to justify racial inequity, to reinforce racist power and policy. Racism is not even six hundred years old. It’s a cancer that we’ve caught early.
But racism is one of the fastest-spreading and most fatal cancers humanity has ever known. It is hard to find a place where its cancer cells are not dividing and multiplying. There is nothing I see in our world today, in our history, giving me hope that one day antiracists will win the fight, that one day the flag of antiracism will fly over a world of equity. What gives me hope is a simple truism. Once we lose hope, we are guaranteed to lose. But if we ignore the odds and fight to create an antiracist world, then we give humanity a chance to one day survive, a chance to live in communion, a chance to be forever free.”
Source: How to Be an Antiracist
“Asking antiracists to change their perspective on racism can be as destabilizing as asking racists to change their perspective on the races. Antiracists can be as doctrinaire in their view of racism as racists can be in their view of not-racism. How can antiracists ask racists to open their minds and change when we are closed-minded and unwilling to change?”
Source: How to Be an Antiracist
“But before we can treat, we must believe. Believe all is not lost for you and me and our society. Believe in the possibility that we can strive to be antiracist from this day forward. Believe in the possibility that we can transform our societies to be antiracist from this day forward. Racist power is not godly. Racist policies are not indestructible. Racial inequities are not inevitable. Racist ideas are not natural to the human mind.”
Source: How to Be an Antiracist
“There was the feeling, too, that she no longer belonged – that she had become a stranger in another people’s world. It had all altered so much; first changing into a place that it was difficult to understand, then growing so much more complex that one gave up trying to understand. No wonder, she thought, that the old become possessive about things; cling to objects which link them with the world that they could understand…”
Source: Consider Her Ways and Others
“There is change, and there is transformation.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“It could be argued that we leave everything most loved with each new experience that demands we grow.”
Source: What Would Maisie Do?: A Companion to the Best-Selling Maisie Dobbs Series – Timeless Wisdom and Inspiration for Fans
“Rule number one of dating . . . You cannot change a man. Even if he does have his own teeth.”
Source: The Switch
“Change happens as it inevitably does.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
“Change is gradual, like the seasons, and our bodies, like the inside-out change that my life had undergone since the divorce.”
Source: Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery