Enthusiastic Reader > Recent Status Updates

p 67 - "The most profound message of racial segregation may be that the absence of people of color from our lives is no real loss. Not one person who loved me, guided me, or taught me ever conveyed that segregation deprived me of anything of value."

p 67 - "While many whites see spaces inhabited by more than a few people of color as undesirable and even dangerous, consider another perspective. I have heard countless people of color describe how painful an experience it was to be one of only a few people of color in their schools and neighborhoods... Imagine how unsafe white schools, which are so precious to white parents, might appear to parents of color."

"I grew up urban and poor and lived in apartment buildings in crowded rental-based neighborhoods. In my childhood, there were many people of color around me. But I knew that if I was to improve my life, I would not stay in these neighborhoods; upward mobility would take me to whiter spaces, and it has. I did not maintain those early relationships with people of color, and no one who guided me encourages me to do so."

p 65 - "Of all racial groups, whites are the most likely to choose segregation and are the group most likely to be in the social and economic position to do so."

"a 2016 study found that half of a sample of medical students and residents believe that blacks feel less pain" (than whites)

"In the US, over the last thirty years, the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by 300 percent."

p 58 continued - "In my own life, these penalties have worked as a form of social coercion. Seeking to avoid conflict and wanting to be liked, I have chosen silence all too often."

p 58 - "The very real consequences of breaking white solidarity play a fundamental role in maintaining white supremacy. We do indeed risk censure and other penalties from our fellow whites. We might be accused of being politically correct or might be perceived as angry, humorless, combative, and not suited to go far in an organization."

p 53 - "I have been warned that I should avoid situations in which I might be a racial minority. These situations are often presented as scary, dangerous, or "sketchy." Yet if the environment or situation is viewed as good, nice, or valuable, I can be confident that as a white person, I will be seen as racially belonging there."

I cannot do justice to the description of Picca and Feagin's study on p 48-49. Let's go for this: "Picca and Feagin argue that the purpose of these backstage performances is to create white solidarity and to reinforce the ideology of white and male supremacy. This behavior keeps racism circulating, albeit in less formal but perhaps more powerful ways than in the past."

p 46 - "They engaged in race talk when they expressed fear about being placed in "dangerous" neighborhoods while describing their hometowns as "sheltered." ... claiming that one has grown up in a sheltered environment raises a question that begs to be answered: "Sheltered from what and in contrast to whom?" It's interesting that "sheltered" is the word chosen rather than "naive" or "ignorant."

This is why it's SO important for white folks to continually examine our attitudes with regards to race.

p 43 - "Aversive racism ... exists under the surface of consciousness because it conflicts with consciously held beliefs of racial equality and justice." It reminds me a lot of the Orthodox view of sin, as a spiritual illness, instead of a guilt. In "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria," Beverly Tatum compares it to the effects of smog.

Her follow-up analysis is also spot on: "These numbers are not describing minor organizations. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of "good people" versus "bad people." They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society."

Interesting list of "the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions."

p 22 - "People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual."

p 20 - "When a racial group's collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-images of individual actors." I like the clarity and depth of this explanation. Thus, actions are not racist because of intent, but because of context and history.

I often wonder what non-Caucasian people who are thought of as white think about representation. Like do they identify with white characters? or do they feel left out? and of course it's going to differ from person to person and even for the same person in different contexts.

p. 18 - "new immigrants or [those who] were raised by immigrants, are likely to have a stronger sense of ethnic identity than will someone of the same ethnicity whose ancestors may have been here for generations. Yet... [i]f they look white, the default assumption will be that they are white and thus they will be responded to as white."

I appreciate how much DiAngelo cites black scholarship. It's important to recognize that this is not something new.

P 30 - Stereotype threat: “the real-time threat of being judged and treated poorly in settings where a negative stereotype about one’s one’s group applies.” Basically, if you perform below excellent, it is taken as as confirmation of the negative stereotype.

p 26 “The mind, triggered by social cues, uses its female identity to endow itself with the greater sensitivity, sympathy, and compassion ascribed to it by cultural belief.” Thus, being in a situation in which we believe we are expected to be more feminine causes a shift in self-perception that results in an increase not only in feminine behavior but in abilities coded feminine.

"Regardless of our protestations that social groups don't matter and that we see everyone as equal, we know that to be a man as defined by the dominant culture is a different experience from being a woman... we are taught that they [these groups] matter, and the social meaning ascribed to these groups creates a difference in lived experience."

"I could see the power of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism allowed white people to exempt themselves from the forces of socialization."

"I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way."

Continuing from last update: How much of a difference exists at birth? Is there a change in the brain at different ages before puberty? That would imply that experiences and environmental factors influence biological structures.

Actually on xviii but it won't let me put that. Fine touches on other research about gendered behavior, a lot of it brain-based. It would be really interesting to see what kind of differences there are in pre-pubescent children of different ages. They have the genetic markers for sexual characteristics, but have not yet had the flooding of hormones that begins at puberty.