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.
Most whites live, grow, play, learn, love, work and die primarily in social and geographic racial segregation. Yet, our society does not teach us to see this as a loss. Pause for a moment and consider the magnitude of this message: We lose nothing of value by having no cross-racial relationships.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the societal tendency to overlook the value of cross-racial relationships, arguing that many experience life in racial segregation without recognizing the loss involved.
Robin Diangelo emphasizes how many white individuals go through their lives in racial and social segregation, failing to perceive the significance of forming cross-racial connections. She provocatively suggests that this lack of diversity in relationships leads to a loss of valuable experiences and perspectives, challenging society's normalization of such segregation and inviting a deeper reflection on the importance of inclusivity and understanding across racial boundaries.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on racial relationships at a community forum.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife inside because there was no alternative except to hide as long as possible--- not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: trying to connect.
Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes.
When you are honest and open with young people, they let you in.
At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person - all my old friends are gone... & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world.
I know you want me back. It's time to face the facts. That I'm the one that's got away. Lord knows that it would take another place, another time, another world, another life. Thank God I found the good in goodbye.
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.