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Whiteness Quotes

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Whiteness Quotes

“By looking upon themselves as human beings, their whiteness to them isn't the yardstick of perfection or honor or anything else. And, therefore, this creates within them an attitude that is different from the attitude of the white that you meet here in America, and it was in Mecca that I realized that white is actually an attitude more so than it's a color.”

HumansDifferentAmericaHuman BeingsWhiteAttitudeColorHonorPerfectionI RealizedWhitenessMeccaYardsticks
Author:Malcolm X
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“What the left ends up missing is that politics have always been at the heart of American culture; it's been a white identity that's been rendered invisible and neutral because it's seen as objective and universal. As a result, we don't pay attention to how whiteness is one among many racial identities, and that identity politics have been here since the get-go.”

HeartHas BeensEndsCultureLeftWhiteResultsPayAttentionMissingIdentityUniversalInvisibleObjectivesPay AttentionAmerican CultureWhitenessIdentity PoliticsRacial Identity
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
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“The brain "fills in" the missing information from the blind spot. Notice what you see in the location of the dot when it's in your blind spot. When the dot disappears, you do not perceive a hole of whiteness or blackness in its place; instead your brain invents a patch of the background pattern. Your brain, with no information from that particular spot in visual space, fills in with the patterns around it. You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.”

SpaceBrainMissingInformationParticularBlindPatternsDisappearBackgroundsHolesSpotsPerceiveVisualsLocationPatchesDotsBlacknessWhitenessBlind Spots
Author:David Eagleman
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“I'm just challenging white supremacy at its intellectual heart every day. It's a pedagogy that I deploy against some of the most vicious resistance to blackness that whiteness is able to throw up. I engage in a lot of intellectual combat with supremacists and with the predicate of white supremacy and white indifference to black identity, and brown and red and yellow identity too, for that matter.”

HeartMatterAbleBlackChallengesWhiteIdentityIntellectualRedResistanceIndifferenceBrownCombatYellowViciousWhite SupremacyBlacknessSupremacyWhitenessPedagogyRed And Yellow
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
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“Whiteness itself is artifice, is fiction, is a construction, is narrative, is myth. And I seek to deconstruct all of that, to challenge the accretion, the intellectual accretion, the philosophical secretion that generates within the edifice of white supremacy that allows people easy escape, and egress. And I'm saying, "No, you can't leave now. You cannot afford to not know what I'm talking about, because you gotta be held accountable."”

PeopleKnowsEasyChallengesWhiteFictionTalkingIntellectualPhilosophicalMythNarrativeConstructionWhite SupremacySaying NoSupremacyWhitenessArtificeEdifice
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
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“At Tara in this fateful hour, I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness: All these I place, By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness!”

HelpingEarthHeavenHoursDarknessSunPathFireGraceSeaRocksWindSnowLightningAlmightyWrathRapidsBrightnessWhitenessSwiftnessDeepness
Author:Madeleine L'Engle
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“True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.”

WellsMayChildrenRealityJobsFallBlackAcceptingPrideProfoundMatesBlack WomenFall BackHouseworkDesolationWhitenessDrudgeryMaleness
Book:What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
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“The soul is the form of the body, but not as the shape of a statue is formatio et terminatio materiae, for form does not exist apart from material. There is no whiteness without a white object. But the soul is not a form in this simple sense, and in particular, is not the shape of the material it informs. Therefore, the shape of a being does not affect the being's soul, for then something lower would inform something higher, which is impossible.”

DoeSoulBodyFormSimpleWhiteImpossibleObjectsParticularMaterialsHigherShapesStatuesWhiteness
Book:Eifelheim
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“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord's living garden.”

IfsWorldSoulBeautifulLordSweetFlowerUnderstoodGardenRoseSimplicityLovelyPerfumeVioletOur LordBrillianceLiliesDaisiesHueWhiteness
Book:The Story of the Soul
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“But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.”

SpiritFeltSpaceGloryWoodsFallenPurityCelestialNovemberDepartedWhitenessAnne Of Windy Poplars
Book:The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Letters and Memoirs (Including The Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, Emily of New Moon, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle & many more
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“For pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space ; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects ; and sounds very remote and then very close ; flesh being gashed and blood sparting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude.” — Virginia Woolf, The Waves”

ShouldImportantPainSoundSpaceBloodCryObjectsSolitudeWaveExtremesFleshPassingPassingsCracksLackingTwistedJointsVirginiaInterferenceWhitenessWoolf
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
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“Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity, from racism, from whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn’t just race that was a social construct. So was I.”

SocialMy OwnRaceIdentityRacismAspectEmploymentNarrativeConstructsWombMy FriendshipWhitenessRacial Identity
Book:White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
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“When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.”

IfsKnowsLooksI CanRunningPainTurnsCoursesLeftLaughingToo MuchColorArmsOne DayOkayBreatheSplitsBlurWhitenessFlicker
Author:Lauren Oliver
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“It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.”

IfsThinkingMenBelieveHeartFactsDreamUsedWhiteBrainOur LivesBehaviorWeaponsUltimateMadnessNuclearSupremeMeatFollyOur SocietyNuclear WeaponsWhite ManHookOur DreamsFathomWhitenessHavoc
Author:Arundhati Roy
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“The afternoon is bright, with spring in the air, a mild March afternoon, with the breath of April stirring, I am alone in the quiet patio looking for some old untried illusion - some shadow on the whiteness of the wall some memory asleep on the stone rim of the fountain, perhaps in the air the light swish of some trailing gown.”

LightMemoriesAirWallQuietSpringIllusionShadowStonesBreathsMarchAfternoonFountainAprilSpringtimeStirringGownsWhitenessRims
Book:Antonio Machado
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“You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence, while the sea destroys its perpetual statues, collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness: because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics, galloping water, incessant sand, we make the only permanent tenderness.”

TogetherWaterSilenceSeaSpeedInvisiblePermanentSandCollapsePerpetualTendernessFabricTowersStatuesFamous LoveWhitenessIncessantWeavingGalloping
Book:The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
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“My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.”

IfsWould BeFreedomWhiteSkinsMarkPrivilegeFeministGladOppressionIf I CouldDisgustingAgonyOppressedWhite SupremacyPassportsWhitenessInsufferablePeelingBreaking FreeWhite Skin
Book:The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism
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“Like sheaves of corn it gathers you unto itself. It threshes you to make you naked. It sifts you to free you from your husks. It grinds you to whiteness. It kneads you until you are pliant. And then it assigns you to its sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's Heart.”

KnowsHeartMaySecretFireSacredBreadNakedFragmentsCornGrindWhitenessSacred Fire
Author:Khalil Gibran
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“Within the model minority rhetoric, Asian Americans are represented as “good” minorities and African Americans are represented as “bad” minorities. Here, the achievements of Asian Americans are used to discipline African Americans. As model minorities, Asian Americans achieved the status of “honorary Whites”. Again it is important to point out that the honorary whiteness of Asian Americans was granted at the expense of Blacks. It is also significant that as “honorary Whites,” Asian Americans do not have the actual privileges associated with “real” whiteness.”

ImportantRealUsedDisciplineAchievementModelsPrivilegeSignificantGrantedAfrican AmericanMinoritiesExpensesRhetoricAsianWhitenessAsian AmericanHonorary
Author:Jennifer Lee
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“The Nazis played the same games against Jews that today’s left plays against 'Eurocentrism,' 'whiteness,' and 'logocentrism.' When you hear a campus radical denounce 'white logic' or 'male logic,' she is standing on the shoulders of a Nazi who denounced 'Jewish logic' and the 'Hebrew disease'...The white man is the Jew of liberal fascism.”

MenPlayTodayGamesLeftWhiteDiseaseStandingLogicMalesJewShouldersRadicalFascismNaziWhite ManCampusHebrewWhiteness
Author:Jonah
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