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Antiracism Quotes

Browse 58 quotes about Antiracism.

Antiracism Quotes

“Such are the incalculable effects of that negative passion of indifference, that hysterical and speculative resurrection of the other. Racism, for example. Logically, it should have declined with the advance of Enlightenment and democracy. Yet the more hybrid our cultures become, and the more the theoretical and genetic bases of racism crumble away, the stronger it grows. But this is because we are dealing here with a mental object, an artificial construct, based on an erosion of the singularity of cultures and entry into the fetishistic system of difference. So long as there is otherness, strangeness and the (possibly violent) dual relation -- as we see in anthropological accounts up to the eighteenth century and into the colonial phase -- there is no racism properly so-called. Once that `natural' relation is lost, we enter into a phobic relationship with an artificial other, idealized by hatred. And because it is an ideal other, this relationship is an exponential one: nothing can stop it, since the whole trend of our culture is towards a fanatically pursued differential construction, a perpetual extrapolation of the same from the other. Autistic culture by dint of fake altruism. All forms of sexist, racist, ethnic or cultural discrimination arise out of the same profound disaffection and out of a collective mourning, a mourning for a dead otherness, set against a background of general indifference -- a logical product of our marvellous planet-wide conviviality. The same indifference can give rise to exactly opposite behaviour. Racism is desperately seeking the other in the form of an evil to be combated. The humanitarian seeks the other just as desperately in the form of victims to aid. Idealization plays for better or for worse. The scapegoat is no longer the person you hound, but the one whose lot you lament. But he is still a scapegoat. And it is still the same person.”

RacismIndifferenceScapegoatAntiracismAutistic Culture
Book:The Perfect Crime
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“Courage is the strength to do what is right in the face of fear, as the anonymous philosopher tells us. I gain insight into what's right from antiracist ideas. I gain strength from fear. While many people are fearful of what could happen if they resist, I am fearful of what could happen if I don't resist, I am fearful of cowardice. Cowardice is the inability to amass the strength to do what is right in the face of fear. And racist power has been terrorizing cowardice into us for generations.”

FearPowerCourageStrengthRacismCowardiceAntiracism
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism.”

DiversityRacismSlaveryHumanismFranceParisMulticulturalismRefugeesBiracialMigrantsHuman Rights DayAntiracismHarlem RenaissanceMulticulturalismoParis AttacksDay To End RacismHuman Migrations
Book:Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
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“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.”

ChangeRacismSelf AwarenessSelf CriticismAntiracismSelf ExaminationRacistsAntiracists
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“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.”

HopeChangeRaceRacismThreatsAntiracismInequity
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“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?”

ChangeRacismOpen MindednessChanging Your MindAntiracismClosed MindednessChanging Minds
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“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.”

FaithBeliefChangeProgressConfidenceRacismTransformationAntiracism
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“Knowledge planted in truth grows in truth. Strength born of peace loses nothing to hate.”

TruthStrengthWisdom QuotesHatredPersonal GrowthPersonal DevelopmentPeace Of MindSpiritual WisdomTranquilityHatersStrength Of CharacterKnowledge Of SelfLifelong LearningPhilosophy Of MindKnowledge And PowerAntiracismPeacismPhilosophy Of KnowledgeSay No To HateAnti HateFamous Quotes By Famous Poets
Book:Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
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“It was the winter after the most depressing election of my adult life, a low point for my faith in the polls, and I had started keeping an unofficial tally in my head of how much I trusted each new white person I met. It was a pitiful tally, because I had decided most of them would forgive anyone who harmed me, would worry more about vocal antiracism ruining the holiday party season and causing the cheese plates to go to waste than about the lives and sanity of the nonwhite humans in their midst.”

PoliticsRaceCompassionCaringAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsElectionsWhitesAntiracism
Book:The Office of Historical Corrections
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“Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.”

WarDiversityMindfulnessHatredSelf AwarenessTerrorismNonviolenceMulticulturalismHumanity And SocietyWar On TerrorXenophobiaSelf HatredCoexistenceCultural DiversityHuman Rights DayPolice ReformAntiracismPeace MovementValues And BeliefsNonviolent Conflict ResolutionValues And PrinciplesHate GroupsPeacismPhilosophy Of Life PeopleNational History DayParis AttacksCoexisting TogetherCoping With ChangeTeaching DiversityPolice CultureCoexistênciaEiffel Tower ArtHuman MigrationsParis FranceCultural DemographicsChanging DemographicsEmbracing DiversityPreparing For The Future
Book:Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
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“As the rich get richer, the rest of us will be left in increasingly precarious situations. In the global recession that is upon us, the powerful will double down on their control of state and cultural apparatus, They will be determined to repress, or co-opt, the tremulous expressions of resistance that are gaining volume as the people rise of against death. The issue of co-option is pertinent. Our articulations of dissent too often mirror the parameters of our oppression, reproducing oppressive systems, unwittingly reinforcing them, or indeed 'diverse' them, to make them more 'inclusive' when in truth the need to dissolve.”

RaceDiversityRacismInclusionWhite SupremacyAntiracismSystems Of Oppression
Book:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – An Empowering Guide to Interrogating Whiteness and Creating Justice
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“Whatever grace might 'trickle down' from the higher regions of a given society to the lower is no more essential than that which rises and converges from the opposite direction.”

DiversityMulticulturalismAntiracismMulticulturalismoTrickle Down EconomicsWealth And PovertyHaves And Have NotsEssential WorkersEconomic Impact Of Covid 19Wealth Divide
Book:Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
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“We were, each of us… at a crossroads of public and private dynamics which had brought us to this frame-worthy moment. I thought of the different currents and crosscurrents of history which had formed, merged, broken apart, and reformed to create the opportunity for us to give something essential to each other’s lives.”

DiversityMulticulturalismAntiracismNonviolent Conflict ResolutionNew Year S DayDay To End RacismDemocracy In ActionProtests Of 2020Americans Against XenophobiaEnding Systemic Racism
Book:Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
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“Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.”

JoyHumanityHuman BeingsDiversityLaughterUniversalIdeologyHuman ConditionMulticulturalismWeepingRace RelationsJoy Of LifeDemographicsCommon GroundCoexistenceCultural DifferencesUniversalityCultural HeritageUniversal LoveAnti RacismInterfaith DialogueUniversal TruthsAntiracismFaith In HumanityFaith In LoveAgape LoveIdeologiesMulticulturalismoLove For HumanityNonviolent Conflict ResolutionCultural RelativismRacial IdentitySpiritual PhilosophyPeacismSocial PhilosophyWaging PeaceEnding WarCultural LiteracyIdeology Religion War CompromiseRacial DivisionCultural BoundariesCultural DemographicsPhilosophy For MillennialsSociological ImaginationAngel ArtAppropriate ApplicationEnding Violent Jihad
Book:Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
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“Les feministes negres sempre han subratllat que la lluita no pot dirigir-se únicament contra el patriarcat, com diuen les feministes blanques. Tampoc poc centrar-se únicament en la lluita de classes, com diuen les socialistes. No pot abordar tan sols el racisme i l'imperialisme, com diuen les negres radicals. I tampoc pot combatre només l'ecocidi, com diuen les activistes ecologistes.”

FeminismEmpowermentAntiracismAnticapitalismBlack Feminism
Book:Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone
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“It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!”

InspirationJoyHumanityDemocracyEmpowermentSocial JusticeAfrican AmericansPoor PeopleSocial MovementsServant LeadershipEconomic DisparityPolitical MovementsSocial InjusticeAntiracismImpoverishmentBlack Prophetic FirePolitical Motivation
Book:Black Prophetic Fire
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“[The Kerner R]eport does not say that Americans are racist. If it did, the only answer would be to line everybody up, all 200 million of us, then line up 200,000 psychiatrists, and have us all lie on couches for ten years trying to understand the problem and for ten years more learning how to deal with it. All over the country people are beating their breasts crying mea culpa--"I'm so sorry that I am a racist"--which means, really, that they want to cop out because if racism is to be solved on an individual psychological basis, then there is little hope. What the Kerner Report is really saying is that the institutions of America brutalize not only Negroes but also whites who are not racists but who in many communities have to use racist institutions. When it is put on that basis, we know we cannot solve the fundamental problem by sitting around examining our innards, but by getting out and fighting for institutional change.”

ChangeRacismInstitutionsCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksIndividualsAttitudesAntiracismInstitutional Change
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“What seem to be vestiges of the Jim Crow world in a sense are just that. But passage of the old order's segregationist trappings throws into relief the deeper reality that what appeared and was experienced as racial hierarchy was also class hierarchy. Now blacks occupy positions in the socioeconomic order previously available only to whites, and whites occupy those previously identified with blacks. And the dynamics of superordination and subordination, patterns of appropriation and distribution, and dominant understandings of which material interests should drive policy remain much as they were. This underscores the point that the core of the Jim Crow order was a class system rooted in employment and production relations that were imposed, stabilized, regulated and naturalized through a regime of white supremacist law, practice, custom, rhetoric, and ideology. Defeating the white supremacist regime was a tremendous victory for social justice and egalitarian interests. At the same time, that victory left the undergirding class system untouched and in practical terms affirmed it. That is the source of that bizarre sensation I felt in the region a generation after the defeat of Jim Crow. The larger takeaway from this reality is that a simple racism/anti-racism framework isn't adequate for making sense of the segregation era, and it certainly isn't up to the task of interpreting what has succeeded it or challenging the forms of inequality and injustice that persist.”

RacismInequalityIntegrationSocial ChangeSegregationHierarchyJim CrowAntiracism
Book:The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives
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“This problematizing of gender places her, in my view, out of the traditional symbolics of female gender, and it is our task to make a place for this different social subject. In doing so, we are less interested in joining the ranks of gendered femaleness than gaining the insurgent ground as female social subject. Actually claiming the monstrosity (of a female with the potential to "name"), which her culture imposes in blindness, 'Sapphire' might after all rewrite a radically different text for female empowerment.”

AntiracismBlack Feminist ThoughtTrans Theory
Book:Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe : An American Grammar Book
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“Words and terms are born out of a need to describe the world. But because the victors, who get to write the history, had little need to describe the fate of the conquered, the words did not exist soon enough to describe and ultimately prevent the wholesale destruction of black communities in America.”

LanguageRaceHistoryRacismLinguisticsAntiracismCritical Race Theory
Book:Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
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“Racial categories were invented to enshrine the idea of white supremacy. They are the product of Eurocentrism and colonialism. To act in ways that reinforce their fixedness rather than undermine them is to continue to operate in the terrain mapped out by white supremacy.”

RaceRacismColonialismWhite SupremacyAntiracismEurocentrism
Book:What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – An Empowering Guide to Interrogating Whiteness and Creating Justice
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“Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with bigotry of all kinds, justifying all kinds of inequities by victim blaming; heightening exploitation and misplaced hate; spurring mass shootings, arms races, and demagogues who polarize nations, shutting down essential organs of democracy; and threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change. In the United States, the metastatic cancer has been spreading, contracting, and threatening to kill the American body as it nearly did before its birth, as it nearly did during its Civil War. But how many people stare inside the body of their nations' racial inequities, their neighborhoods' racial inequities, their occupations' racial inequities, their institutions' racial inequities, and flatly deny that their policies are racist? They flatly deny that racial inequity is a signpost of racist policy. They flatly deny the racist policy as they use racist ideas to justify the racial inequity. They flatly deny the cancer of racism as the cancer cells spread and literally threaten their own lives and the lives of the people and spaces and places they hold dear. The popular conception of denial--like the popular strategy of suasion--is suicidal.”

RacismDenialSystemic RacismInstitutional RacismAntiracismInequityRacist Policies
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“Racism is the ultimate societal bug, spreading its nasty influence far and wide. But here's the kicker: unlike those pesky biological viruses that have us reaching for hand sanitizer, this one's entirely curable. All it takes is a potent mix of education to disinfect ignorance, a hefty shot of empathy to build immunity, and a collective action booster to wipe it out for good. It's like a global vaccine campaign, but instead of needles, we're armed with open minds and big hearts.”

RacismEqualityAntiracismHumanrightsSocialjusticeEnddiscriminationEqualityforallRacialequalityStopracismUnityindiversity
Author:Life is Positive
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“It’s not just a matter of having lost the land and the wealth that came with it. It’s a matter of the fact that we lost a way of life that we should have been able to pass on to our children and to their children, but which we can’t because of what was taken from us. (Harris Neck, Georgia native Wilson Moran as quoted by Aberjhani in The American Poet Who Went Home Again)”

Social JusticeAfrican AmericansBlack History MonthReparationsAntiracismJuneteenth1619 ProjectBlack People In GeorgiaEducation WeekWilson Moran
Book:The American Poet Who Went Home Again
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“Moral and educational suasion breathes the assumption that racist minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise. Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967. Look at the soaring support for Obamacare after its passage in 2010. Racist policymakers drum up fear of antiracist policies through racist ideas, knowing if the policies are implemented, the fears they circulate will never come to pass. Once the fears do not come to pass, people will let down their guards as they enjoy the benefits. Once they clearly benefit, most Americans will support and become the defenders of the antiracist policies they once feared.”

PolicyRacismAntiracismRacistsRacist PoliciesSuasion
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”

Happiness QuotesDecolonizationAntiracismSomali WritersQueer AfricanRadical JoyBlack QueerQueer Somali
Author:Diriye Osman
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“The Black Power movement—or what we referred to at the time as the Black liberation movement...was a response to what were perceived as limitations of the civil rights movement: we not only needed to claim legal rights within the existing society but also to demand substantive rights—in jobs, housing, health care, education, et cetera.”

Civil Rights MovementAntiracismBlack Liberation MovementBlack Freedom Movement
Book:Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement
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“A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.”

RacismEquityAntiracismInequityPoliciesRacist PoliciesAntiracist Policies
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“The root problem—from Prince Henry to President Trump—has always been the self-interest of racist power. Powerful economic, political, and cultural self-interest—the primitive accumulation of capital in the case of royal Portugal and subsequent slave traders—has been behind racist policies. Powerful and brilliant intellectuals in the tradition of Gomes de Zurara then produced racist ideas to justify the racist policies of their era, to redirect the blame for their era’s racial inequities away from those policies and onto people.”

PowerRacismSelf InterestAntiracismRacist Policies
Book:How to Be an Antiracist
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“They like the places where we hurt. They use it against us. The words of the girl, my other self from the dream place, strikes with sudden understanding. The places where we hurt. Where we hurt. Not just me, all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs full of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice. But not hate. They ain't the same thing. Never was. These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that's what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them. Only I can't forget, because all those memories always with me, showing me the way.”

PainHurtJusticeFreedomAngerSlaveryBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryBlmAntiracism
Book:Ring Shout
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“Trovo sempre sconcertante quando qualcuno mi dice: «Non bisogna credere a tutto ciò che si vede sui social network, perché spesso non corrispondono alla realtà». Il problema dell'autenticità non è capire quanto il mio profilo corrisponda alla realtà, ma quanto la presunta realtà corrisponda davvero a me, a quello che sono. Se una persona con un handicap crea un'identità digitale che l'handicap non lo ha e stabilisce relazioni, sta producendo una realtà falsata o ne sta ipotizzando una piú autentica rispetto a sé? Se una persona che appartiene a un'etnia razzializzata si inventa un'identità digitale grazie alla quale le diventano possibili legami con persone che altrimenti non si relazionerebbero mai a lei, sta mentendo o sta producendo una distorsione creativa nella società razzista in cui vive? Se una donna nata in un corpo maschile aggira la disforia di genere attraverso un'identità digitale che corrisponde al genere in cui si riconosce, possiamo parlare di inganno oppure siamo davanti a una realtà piú sincera? Dalla risposta a queste domande dipende molta della nostra capacità di restare uman3 negli ambiti sempre piú postumani del tempo che le nostre vite stanno già attraversando.”

RealRealityRacismSocial MediaDiscriminationLgbtAbleismAntiracismVirtualVirtuality
Book:God Save the Queer: Catechismo femminista
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“Now your people! Ya'll got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous - so strong!”

HateSocial JusticeSlaveryBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryLoathingAntiracismHate CrimesBipoc
Book:Ring Shout
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