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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Racism shouldn't be viewed simply as a moral failing but as a systemic issue affecting everyone.
Robin Diangelo's quote emphasizes that it is a misunderstanding to view racism solely as a personal moral failing. Instead, she urges people, particularly white individuals, to recognize racism as a pervasive system in which everyone participates, regardless of their personal intentions or feelings, thus advocating for a more nuanced understanding of societal issues related to race.
Themes
RacismSystemicUnderstandingDiscomfortSociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a workshop on social justice to highlight the complexities of racism.
More from Robin Diangelo
All quotes →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.
Robin DiangeloRead
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.
Robin DiangeloRead
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.
Robin DiangeloRead
White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.
Robin DiangeloRead
I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality.
Robin DiangeloRead
Similar quotes
You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.
Charles LindberghRead
Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed.
Umberto EcoRead
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
Henry David ThoreauRead
As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
Charles DarwinRead
There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure. Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!
Seneca The YoungerRead
Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.
Miguel De CervantesRead