Noah

“To justify these contradictory rulings, the court stated that being white was based on the common understanding of the white man. In other words, people already seen as white got to decide who was white.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“Individual whites may be “against” racism, but they still benefit from a system that privileges whites as a group. David Wellman succinctly summarizes racism as “a system of advantage based on race.”17 These advantages are referred to as white privilege, a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context (government, community, workplace, schools, etc.).18 But let me be clear: stating that racism privileges whites does not mean that individual white people do not struggle or face barriers. It does mean that we do not face the particular barriers of racism.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“Ideologies that obscure racism as a system of inequality are perhaps the most powerful racial forces because once we accept our positions within racial hierarchies, these positions seem natural and difficult to question, even when we are disadvantaged by them. In this way, very little external pressure needs to be applied to keep people in their places; once the rationalizations for inequality are internalized, both sides will uphold the relationship.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“the prevailing belief that prejudice is bad causes us to deny its unavoidable reality.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism