Dolly Chugh > Quotes

“Equality says we treat everyone the same, regardless of headwinds or tailwinds. Equity says we give people what they need to have the same access and opportunities as others, taking into account the headwinds they face, which may mean differential treatment for some groups.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.” —Sydney J. Harris”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Challenge yourself to hear their experience without questioning its expression. Avoid being the tone police.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“We redefine what it means to be a good person as someone who is trying to be better, as opposed to someone who is allowing themselves to believe in the illusion that they are always a good person.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“We need to be willing to own our impact regardless of our intent.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“None of us are only one thing.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Believing in diversity and inclusion does not mean we are building diverse and inclusive organizations.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Hell is not a place where we ourselves suffer. Hell is where you watch people you care about suffer and do nothing about it.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“From a distance we (literally) do not see people as individuals.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Media acts as both windows and mirrors.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“If you are in the sun and I am in the rain, why is it divisive for me to point out this difference? What is really divisive is telling someone who is standing in the rain that it is not raining.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“The less we worry about being good people, the better people we will be.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Art steers conversations.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Winning the argument is not what breaks the norm. Breaking the norm breaks the norm.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“America is not always the country it means to be.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Words are less important than intentions, and if your intention is to be supportive, silence is rarely the way to go.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“It is easy to write off anger as sour grapes… it was not about the grape; it was about the inequity.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“The person I want to be, the kinds of people we all aspire to be, are better than we actually are.”
― Dolly Chugh, Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“While no individual action is a revolution, the sum of their daily efforts leads to real revolution.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“The differences of the past still form a gap in the present. The differences of the present widen the gap.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Light is not an alternative to heat in social movements. It is a necessary partner.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“2016 was the new 1968.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Research shows that reading fiction increases empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, which we need for becoming the people we mean to be.5 In addition, fiction has been shown to change beliefs more effectively than nonfiction6 because reading fiction with social content activates specific parts of the brain.7 Look at the last three books you read. If the authors all share your identity, you may be missing an opportunity to peek through the window into other perspectives and develop the broader perspective you mean to have.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“No one wants to be someone else’s learning curve.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“When we feel sorry for someone, we inadvertently put ourselves in the high-power position.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Social media allows us to wander beyond our personal networks.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Colleen’s thought experiment is important because of its rigor. To understand white privilege, systemic racial bias, and the disadvantages of headwinds, the most useful comparison is between “white me” and “black me.” Yes, some African American families overcame the headwinds, at one key juncture after another, but their success does not mean that they would not have gone even further if they were white. Yes, many white families started from very little and faced many obstacles, but their success does not mean that things would not have been even harder if they were black.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Nobody is born woke.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“Antiracist educator and author Debby Irving uses an often-cited headwinds and tailwinds metaphor to explain the invisibility of these systemic, group-level differences. Headwinds are the challenges -- some big, some small, some visible, some invisible -- that make life harder for some people, but not for all people. When you run against a headwind, your speed slows down and you have to push harder. You can feel the headwind. When you have a tailwind pushing you, it is a force that propels you forward. It is consequential but easily unnoticed or forgotten. In fact, if you are like me when I jog with a tailwind, you may glow with pride at your great running time that day, as if it were your own athletic prowess. When you have the tailwind, you will not notice that some runners are running into headwinds. They may be running as hard as, or even harder than, you, but they will appear lazier and slower to you. When some of them grow tired and stop trying, they will appear self-destructive to you.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

“The more we care about something, the more likely we are to willfully ignore negative relevant information about it. The more we care about something, the less we want to know.”
― Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias