Privilege, Power, and Difference Quotes

“People are tagged with other labels that point to the lowest-status group they belong to, as in "woman doctor" or "black writer," but never "white lawyer" or male senator". Any category that lowers our status relative to others' can be used to mark us; to be privileged is to go through life with the relative ease of being unmarked.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“It is more likely that the paths others have chosen influence the paths I choose. This suggests that the simplest way to help others make different choices is to make them myself, and to do it openly. As I shift the patterns of my own participation in the systemps of privilege, I make it easier for others to do so as well, and harder for them not to. Simply by setting an example - rather than trying to change them - I crate the possibility of their participating in change in their own time and in their own way. In this way I widen the circle of change without provoking the kind of defensiveness that perpetuates paths of least resistance and the oppressive systems they serve.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“There is no such thing as doing nothing. There is no such thing as neutral or uninvolved. At every moment, social life involves all of us.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“The truth doesn't matter because ideology isn't about truth or accuracy. Rather, its purpose is to support and perpetuate the status quo by making it appear normal and legitimate... And when someone dares to challenge that comforting reality, it's easy to confuse the bearer of bad news with the bad news itself. When people of color call attention to the divisions caused by white privilege, for example, they're often accused of creating those divisions, as if racism isn't a problem unless you talk about it.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“Healing imagery is also problematic because it implies that the damage being done is primarily emotional. The goal becomes one of "getting along" better by being nicer and more tolerant toward one another, forgiving and forgetting, living in more authentic ways. I don’t object to this goal, but it ignores the fact that a lot of the trouble doesn’t begin and end with interpersonal relations and emotional wounds. Much of it is embedded in structures of power and inequality that shape almost every aspect of life in this society, from economics to politics to religion to schools and the family. The idea that we’re going to get out of this by somehow getting to a place where we’re kinder and more sensitive to one another ignores most of what we have to overcome. It sets us up to walk right past the trouble toward an alternative that doesn’t exist and can’t exist until we do something about what creates privilege and oppression in the first place. And that is something that needs to be changed, not healed.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“To justify such direct forms of imperialism and oppression, whites developed the IDEA of whiteness to define a privileged social category elevated above everyone who wasn't included in it. This made it possible to reconcile conquest, treachery, slavery, and genocide, with the nation's newly professed ideals of democracy, freedom, and human dignity. If whiteness define what it meant to be human, then it was seen as less off an offense against the Constitution (not to mention God) to dominate and oppress those who happened to fall outside that definition as the United States marched onward toward what was popularly perceived as its Manifest Destiny.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“This was especially true of the Irish in Ireland in relation to the British, who for centuries treated them as an inferior race. Note, however, that their skin color was indistinguishable from that of those considered to be "white". If anything, the skin of most people of Irish descent is "fairer" than that of others of European heritage. But their actual complexion didn't matter, because the dominant racial group has the cultural authority to define the boundaries around "white" as it chooses.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“A student of color in one of my classes, for example, once told me that she noticed my cutting her off during class, something she didn't think I did with white students. I could have weighed in with my professional authority and said it wasn't true, that she was imagining it, that I treated all my students that way, that she was being too sensitive, that I travel all over the country speaking about issues of inequality and injustice, so certainly I was above such things. But what I said to her was that I was truly sorry she'd had that experience. I wasn't aware of doing that, I told her, and the fact that I didn't consciously mean to was beside the point.

To respond in this way, I had to de-center myself from my privilege and make her experience and not mine the point of the conversation. I ended by telling her I would do everything I could to oay attention to this problem in the future to make sure it didn't happen again.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“One way to see the constructed nature of reality is to notice how the definitions of different "races" change historically, by including groups at one time that were excluded in another. The Irish, for example, were long considered by the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of England and the United States to be members of a nonwhite "race", as were Italians, Jews, and people from a number of Eastern European countries. As such, immigrants from these groups to England and the United States were excluded and subjugated and exploited in much the same way that blacks were.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“Privilege increases the odds of having things your own way, of being able to set the agenda in a social situation and determine the rules and standards and how they're applied. Privilege grants the cultural authority to make judgments about others and to have those judgments stick. It allows people to define reality and to have prevailing definitions of reality fit their experience. Privilege means being able to decide who gets taken seriously, who receives attention, who is accountable to whom and for what. And it grants a presumption of superiority and social permission to act on that presumption without having to worry about being challenged.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“subordinate groups are often pitted against one another in ways that draw attention away from the system of privilege that hurts them all.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“The odds are loaded toward a path of least resistance in several ways. We often choose a path because it is the only one we see. When I get on an elevator, for example, I turn and face front along with everyone else. It rarely occurs to me to do it any other way, such as facing the rear. If I did, I'd soon feel how some paths bring on more social resistance than others.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference

“No woman (or man) becomes a corporate manager, gets tenure at a university, or is elected to public office by showing their capacity for cooperation, sharing, emotional sensitivity, and nurturing.”
― Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference