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White Privilege Quotes

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White Privilege Quotes

“...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.”

“In order to prevent chronic discomfort, Whites may learn not to notice. But in not noticing, one loses opportunities for greater insight into oneself and one's experience. A significant dimension of who one is in the world, one's Whiteness, remains uninvestigated and perceptions of daily experience are routinely distorted. Privilege goes unnoticed, and all but the most blatant acts of racial bigotry are ignored. Not noticing requires energy.”

“People were upset about Trump's win in 2016 because he ran a campaign promising to implement policies that targeted racial and ethnic minorities with state violence (and he did) not simply because he was mean or rude. In no sense is Biden's campaign comparable. Sorry! Biden won't be banning Christians, arbitrarily revoking the status of white immigrants here because of natural disasters, trying to sell off white populated parts of the country or encouraging police brutality against white people. Your disappointment is not oppression. (11/9/2020 on Twitter)”

“I don't buy into the notion of 'privilege' at all. To even attempt to brand and shame whole swathes of people based on their race or gender is, to me, obscene. It has icky echoes of totalitarian propaganda which seeks to direct the ire of a populace at certain sections of society deemed 'unworthy.' Playing the blame game gets us nowhere.”

“White supremacists boast about white americans being superior. Let's look at it reasonably, shall we - not that you can reason with fanatics! Most of the third world speaks two or three languages, yet you say, white americans are superior! Dreamers from the third world bear ten times more difficulty to achieve their dream, yet you say, white americans are superior! Humankind's earliest scientific achievements came not from the West, but from the East and the Middle East, yet you say, America is superior - a juvenile country whose very existence is rooted in humankind's worst of atrocities. Well done! You really are superior - in cooking up fiction. The fact of the matter is, excellence has no race. And the only inferior people on earth are the ones who think of others as such.”

“Sonnet of Nazi America America is the land of liberty, Offer available only to white people. When it comes to people of color, It's a Nazi nation though unofficial. If you are white and you make a mistake, You are most likely to receive a warning. But if you are a person of color or muslim, Better have a good reason for breathing. They say we live in a democratic land, A system of, by and for the people. But what they forget to teach in school, People doesn’t really mean every individual. No one can change the past that's for sure. Defying all supremacy we must rise and roar.”

“White people caused genocide after genocide, Yet you still boast about white superiority. You proclaim that people of color are inferior, While white society is the epitome of savagery. After all the heartaches inflicted by white people, A 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient. Yet I am human enough to declare, we are all equal; All I ask is that, humans finally behave human.”

“Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't.”

“Sociologically speaking, American democracy is the perfect specimen of a dysfunctional democracy. When a supremacist president incites racist hate and terrorist violence, out of bigotry and boneheadedness, his stoneage supporters consider it a matter of pride, but when an egalitarian president so much as mispronounces a few words due to his medical stammer, he is deemed incompetent by those people. Which only goes to show, no matter how much a nation tries to right the wrongs of its inhuman origin, there will always be some people who'd consider those inhumanities as their proud heritage, and would go to any length to maintain those customs and beliefs as such. And this is not an American phenomenon, it's a worldwide phenomenon - and everywhere it manifests under the same banner of tradition, heritage and nationalism. That is why I say to you - until we oust every last trace of nationalism from every corner of this world, we shall never in a million years have a genuinely integrated and upward-moving society. Either nationalism or humanity, you cannot have both - either borders or peace, you cannot have both - either guns or children, you cannot have both - either heritage or history, you cannot have both. If history comes as a blow to your heritage, then by all means, live in your bubble - but do so as a prehistoric ape disconnected from the civilizing world. You cannot call yourself a civilized human and at the same time refuse to acknowledge human suffering. Your uncivilization may be your prerogative, but before you turn that uncivilization into the norm, you shall find a hundred MLKs, Baldwins, Mayas and Naskars standing as obstacle to your insanity.”

“If history comes as a blow to your heritage, then by all means, live in your bubble - but do so as a prehistoric ape disconnected from the civilizing world. You cannot call yourself a civilized human and at the same time refuse to acknowledge human suffering. Your uncivilization may be your prerogative, but before you turn that uncivilization into the norm, you shall find a hundred MLKs, Baldwins, Mayas and Naskars standing as obstacle to your insanity.”

“Susan’s and Jennifer’s job searches are likely made harder by the color of their skin. In the early 2000s, researchers in Chicago and Boston mailed out fake résumés to hundreds of employers, varying only the names of the applicants, but choosing names that would be seen as identifiably black or white. Strikingly, “Emily” and “Brendan” were 50 percent more likely to get called for an interview than “Lakisha” and “Jamal.” A few years later, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin conducted a similar study in Milwaukee, but with a unique twist. She recruited two black and two white actors (college students, posing as high school graduates) who were as similar as possible in every way. She sent these “job applicants” out in pairs, with virtually identical fake résumés, to apply for entry-level jobs. Her twist was to instruct one of the white and one of the black applicants to tell employers that they had a felony conviction and had just been released from prison the month before. Even the researcher was surprised by what she found: the white applicant with a felony conviction was more likely to get a positive response from a prospective employer than the black applicant with no criminal record. When the study was replicated in New York City a few years later, she and her colleagues saw similar results for Latino applicants relative to whites.”

“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”

“We see race as what people of color have (or are.) If people of color are not present, race is not present. Further, if people of color are not present, not only is race absent, so is that terrible thing: racism. Ironically, this positions racism as something people of color have and bring to whites, rather than a system which whites control and impose on people of color.”

“Act now, because people are dying now in this unjust system. How many lives have been ground up by racial prejudice and hate? How many opportunities have we already lost? Act and talk and learn and fuck up and learn some more and act again and do better. We have to do this all at once. We have to learn and fight at the same time. Because people have been waiting far too long for their chance to live as equals in this society.”

“I noticed a trend with white communists. They do not value autonomy and liberation, they value control and dominance, just like their political counterparts. They do not oppose centralized power, they oppose centralized power that they do not have ownership of. It isn't about the liberation of marginalized classes, it's about placing power within the white "working class" and those in proximity to them.”

“Either Western or Human (Undoing Westwash Sonnet) When the Brits invade a country, It's called the march of civilization. When refugees arrive in search of life, It's dehumanized as illegal immigration. When America recruits talents from abroad, It is proudly boasted as headhunting. When another nation does exactly the same, It is hailed as espionage and IP stealing. When America spies on everybody else, It is sugarcoated as national security. If someone so much as loses a weather balloon, It is used to gaslight a nation into a frenzy. To see the world as it is, first we gotta take off our western glasses. Look at the human world with human eyes, only then you'll fathom justice and progress.”

“I see us as a black and white version of John and Yoko, a duet of magic and productivity. It feels as though it will last forever. Richard Pryor has finally found his panacea, me. People look at me as Richard's deliverance: he is the tragic, self- destructive freak no longer.”

“As I listen to their jive, I try to find my way around the street mind, the black man's mind. Feeling left out, like an ostracized kid at a playground, I try to join in on the "get down" flavor of the dialogue by calling Richard Pryor a nigger.”

“When we leave the realm of cinema, it is obvious that the dynamics of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy---which has historically represented black females as "undesirable mates" even if they are desirable sex objects, and so rendered it socially unacceptable for powerful white males to seek committed relationships with black women---continue to inform the nature of romantic partnership in our society. What would happen to the future of white supremacist patriarchy if heterosexual white males were choosing to form serious relationships with black females? Clearly, this structure would be under mined. Significantly, The Bodyguard reaffirms this message. Frank Farmer is portrayed as a conservative Republican patriarch, a defender of the nation. Once he leaves the black woman "she devil" who has seduced and enthralled him, he returns to his rightful place as keeper of the nation's patriarchal legacy. In the film, we see him protecting the white male officers of state. These last scenes suggest that loving a black woman would keep him from honoring and protecting the nation.”

“World Domination (A Satirical Sonnet) White people's pain is pain, Everybody else's is just discomfort. That is why you peddle Hitler, As such a monster. You don't hate Hitler because, He wanted to dominate the world, You hate Hitler because he wanted, To dominate everybody, including the whites. The world is but heirloom to the whites, All other claims are null and void! Loot like a pommy, rebel like an insurrectionist, Trod on whoever, just not the fellow white! World domination is the ultimate white privilege. Threat to white welfare is the ultimate human rights infringement.”

“Feeling that our demands were moderate, I had assumed that they would be granted with little question; I had believed that the privileged would give up their privileges on request. This experience, however, taught me a lesson. I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance.”

“Qatar & The West (The Sonnet) All of a sudden the entire west is peeved at Qatar, Because only the west has exclusive rights to exposure. All of a sudden we care about the migrant workers, The Afghans, Palestinians and Kashmiris no longer matter. Human rights issue here is, we don't care about human rights, We only care about filling the air with hypocrisy and mania. Our poster boy just dumped half his new workforce as garbage, We buy Oscar, ditch Batgirl, and we diss Qatar for buying FIFA! We are just peeved that the Arabs are showing off for a change, Sure it's unacceptable, since showing off is a western tradition. Yes, it's true that the Middle East reeks with human rights issues, But it is also teeming with passion beyond western comprehension. If you really care about human rights stick to a cause for more than a fortnight. Otherwise keep your trap shut, lest you open and be proved a privileged white.”

“I do not believe guilt is inherited, but responsibility is, and there is nobody alive today whose existence has not been shaped by colonialist, racist forces. That is a legacy we all live with, and we should all deal with the consequences. If you have benefitted, then soaking yourself in remorse and guilt does not help anyone. What you can do, though, is ask constantly how you have felt those benefits. At whose expense were they gained?”

“The First World War (Sonnet 1501) There are bigger villains than Adolf, But they are not deemed villain so long as they do white man no harm. Two world wars count for nothing, compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. You only hear of two world wars, not more, Because world history is actually white history. White welfare has always been default human welfare, Like today we humans deem animal welfare secondary. Even the world map as you know is one big lie, depicting an exaggerated size of the global north. Rather than arguing over the planethood of Pluto, How about you right the wrongs right here on earth! Endeavor as human and reclaim your humanhood, Work for actual human welfare, defying white denial. There never was a world war, there was only white war, The first world war has just begun, against violation.”

“In the same way I had managed to overlook the truth of my state’s history in the rosy optimism of my worldview, I never really had cause to notice my whiteness. I didn’t have any impetus to until November 8, 2016, happened. I thought that I understood privilege; I’d studied it in college and pushed against injustice where I saw it. I volunteered for organizations like Planned Parenthood, argued in the face of conservatives who rolled their eyes at Black Lives Matter, and marveled in my gorgeous awakening. But my whiteness, up until that day in November, had allowed me to believe we were ultimately moving forward. Yes, people of color were being shot in the street, conservative lawmakers were trying to push anti-LGBTQ legislation in other states and on the national level, but we were waking up. We had a black president and the recognition of same-sex marriage, and my little activist heart, in all of its whiteness, just believed that things always get better. Because in whiteland, that’s the way it goes. The bad guy will always lose. But then we elected the bad guy, and everything I’ve ever believed to be fundamentally true was incinerated and pissed on. —Sarah Saterlee”

“Both Richard and I sat silent and watched Jennifer Lee. She came across the room and over to us and swept our chess pieces off the board. “Bastard!” she announced and started back for the door. “No. Jennifer, I’ve had it with you. You took your clothes off in front of my son. My son came to me and he was crying and I said what’s wrong but he wouldn’t say anything. I made him tell me, Jennifer. He said you came out of your bedroom naked. You showed my son your pussy, woman!” “And you hit me,” Jennifer accused him. I realized that they were both showing off right in front of me to embarrass the other one. “And you spit in my face and called me a nigger!” he shot back. She came back. “Because I wanted to! Damn you!” “Well, just leave. I told you to leave. Now leave. I’ve done all I could for you, just leave. You would never treat Warren Beatty like you treated me. Or any of those other white boys you star-fucked.” He turned to me. “Man, can you imagine her doing that to Warren Beatty?” I said, “No!”