White Privilege Quotes

“Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”

This invisibility is political.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Privilege: A Reader

“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Our police force was not created to serve black Americans; it was created to police black Americans and serve white Americans.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves.”
― Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

“This statement of the jurors’ sense of justice may be the most succinct and forthright declaration of white privilege and racial paternalism I have ever heard.”
― George Critchlow, The Lifer and the Lawyer: A Story of Punishment, Penitence, and Privilege

“When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
― Adam Rutherford, How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

“What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up – but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you'd be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys.

Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

“You're a Black educated fool, son. These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear.”
― Ralph Ellison

“Paul jumped, unable to hide his surprise. Then he grinned and said, "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. For a Chinese woman, your English is extraordinary. There is not a trace of an accent to be found."
"I have an American accent," she replied dully.
Paul waved her off. "You know what I mean."
Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn more than one language, unlike you?”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“Heterosexual choice is allowed to be the background of a writer’s life; its wallpaper. So is maleness. And whiteness. Step out of that and you will be called a feminist writer, a lesbian writer, a gay writer, a woman writer. A black writer. You will never be called a heterosexual writer or a male writer or a white writer. Those signifiers are absorbed into the single word ‘writer’.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Love

“The American must stop being american, you must outgrow everything that the pilgrims held near and dear, because the pilgrims were among apekind's most grotesque offenders, second only to their own forefathers, the british empire and other euro imperials.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Feeling that our demands were moderate, I had assumed that they would be granted with little question; I had believed that the privileged would give up their privileges on request. This experience, however, taught me a lesson. I came to see that no one gives up his privileges without strong resistance.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“Don’t take feminism lessons from rich white women. Don’t take masculinity lessons from chauvinist pigs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Center of the World is Indigenous (Sonnet 2680)

Fact of the matter is,
most white scholars eventually
turn out to be just another colonial twit,
no matter how brilliant, how learned they are,
because animal conditioning doesn't wear off
with mere education of the intellect -

your soul must be disinfected of colonial filth,
which is not possible until you intrinsically
embody the pain, indignity, and humiliations
of the oppressed, subjected through generations.

Your opinion on religion, your opinion of reason,
your opinion of philosophy, your opinion of society,
it's all just opinion, that too of a lesser lifeform,
until you outgrow your whiteness and look at
the world through the actual center of the world -
and the center of the world is indigenous.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“White is not a color, white is a mindset of exploitation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Beware of white people bearing gift.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“How to be human despite being white? Just don't be a christian nationalist, be jesus-like, not a christ salesman.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“In matters of human rights, ethics, morality, reason, righteousness, philosophy and theology, white people must be seen, not heard - unless you've proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, with every ounce of your existence, that you value humanity more than you value your faith, your intellect, your philosophy, and every aspect of your whitewashed identikit.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“White is not a color, white is a mindset, and every person infected by that mindset is a potential threat to the human race, as such they must be crowdfunded with immediate psychiatric treatment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“White is not a color, white is a mentality, which affects everybody, particularly in a world which is whitewashed from head to toe, from future to the past, from pulpit to the parliament, from belief to disbelief.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“I don't consider any white man's opinion worthy of respect until they've proven that they're on the side of humanity, not their thieving ancestors’ - and this applies not just to the white man of faith, but also the white man of reason.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“Naskar DSM of Earth Disorders (Sonnet 3134)

Racism is a developmental disorder,
Colonialism is an eating disorder,
Nationalism is paranoid schizophrenia.

Misogyny is a vertebral dysfunction,
Transphobia is oxygen deficiency,
White privilege is narcissistic personality disorder.

Islamophobia is a cardiac disorder,
Zionism is a brain disorder.
I prescribe, don't isolate them,
make it unbearably friendly for them
to even go grocery shopping -
smile, offer them a flower,
and a get well card.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human

“The Naskar Fraud (Sonnet 3185)

If a white person promotes his work, it's industrious.
If a colored person promotes his work, it's spam.
If a white person is hyper-productive, he's a genius.
If a colored person is hyper-productive, he's a fraud.

White person produces versatile work, he's a polymath.
Colored person produces versatile work, it's a scam.
White people work in foreign lands, they're expats.
Colored people work in foreign lands, they're immigrants.

White people destroy countries after countries,
still they can expect to be treated fairly.
Colored people seek for an ounce of acceptance,
suddenly it's a western existential catastrophe.

And yet, I forgive you my child! Dismiss me today,
your own blood will celebrate me tomorrow.
P.S. my vastness is no reason for you to feel threatened,
I'm not gonna begrudge you your little white giants.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human

“If a white person promotes his work, it's industrious. If a colored person promotes his work, it's spam.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human

“If a white person is hyper-productive, he's a genius. If a colored person is hyper-productive, he's a fraud.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human

“Till White Man Verifies (Sonnet 3188)

If a "white man" cannot verify it,
is it really rational!
If a "white man" cannot verify it,
is it really poetry!

If a "white man" cannot verify it,
is it really philosophy!
If a "white man" cannot verify it,
is it really theology!

If a "white man" has no need for religion,
is there really any need for religion!
Once a "white man" declares his "true religion",
isn't it proof that all others are false!

Till a "white man" climbs the Everest,
do the Himalayas really exist!
If a "white man" cannot recognize genocide
outside one little white-friendly holocaust
narrative, did the genocides really happen!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human

“Till a “white man” climbs the Everest, do the Himalayas really exist!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkoholic: Portrait of A Human