The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture.
Robin DiangeloRead
This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time - that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not 'doing.'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that racism is often perceived as individual actions rather than a systemic issue.
Robin DiAngelo argues that the understanding of racism has evolved, suggesting that it is mistakenly viewed only as individual behavior. This perspective limits our understanding of racism as a systemic problem rooted in societal structures, rather than merely the actions of individuals, highlighting the need for a broader awareness of how racism permeates social constructs and norms.
In practice
In a discussion about systemic racism during a community meeting.
The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture.
Whites often respond defensively when linked to other whites as a group or 'accused' of collectively benefiting from racism, because as individuals, each white person is 'different' from any other white person and expects to be seen as such.
One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in.
You have to be in accountable relationships across race. Accountable means that they're authentic, they're sustained, and that you do talk about racism, and you are able to be given feedback.
This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sources - schools, textbooks, media - don't provide us with the multiple perspectives we need.
White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.
If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
If the whole earth is infinitely small in comparison with the sphere of the stars, what is man compared with all these created beings!
The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
In theory it is easy to convince an ignorant person; in actual life, men not only object to offer themselves to be convinced, but hate the man who has convinced them.
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.
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