Racism Quotes

“This ‘mantra’ of race, class, and gender has now led to a new and to some extent almost separate field of research under the umbrella term of ‘intersectionality’ studies, which includes within its research framework an understanding that age, disability, and citizenship also have differential impacts on majority and minority communities and individuals.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Mild though Obama’s observations were, all the tropes of the angry black man out to get revenge were thrown at him, especially in talk shows on radio and TV, with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading the charge. Among other things, Obama’s policies were accused of being covert attempts at getting ‘reparations’ for slavery, segregation, and discrimination.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“the election of Obama showed that America had moved beyond ‘race’ into a definitively post-racial era in which now even a black American could be president. The”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“processes of racialization have been crucially intertwined with the rise of neoliberal economic policies that involve the deregulation of markets and the shrinking of the state sector, especially in the area of welfare. In effect, neoliberal policies have served to reproduce white privilege.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Colourblind racism has also been labelled ‘laissez faire racism’ because it is based on the myth of individuals with equal starting points competing in a free market, thus chiming with neoliberal economic nostrums. Indeed, it has been argued by Randolph Hohle”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Thus an explanation has arisen—the ‘culture of poverty’ thesis—which has painted the African American community, especially, as suffering from a cultural deficit of single-parent families, low educational aspirations, laziness, and ‘welfare dependency’, and which, together or singly, explains the continuing disadvantaged position of African Americans in particular.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“So, for people of colour to even make it to the point where they could be considered for college admission, or employment in managerial or professional occupations, they had to overcome obstacles that white admissions tutors and employers simply did not have to face and remained unaware of.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“In other words, the idea that there was, in 1980s America, more and more of a level playing field in housing, educational resources, and employment opportunities was a myth.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“The colourblind view was grounded in the perception that blacks, whites, and non-white Hispanics now operated on a level playing field, and that no special consideration was to be given to the ‘racial’ background of, say, applicants for jobs or college admission.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Colourblind racism asserts that there are no real problems with racism in our society, that challenges stem from individuals rather than our institutions and collective thinking and behavior.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“In the light of the history sketched out above, it should be clear, counterintuitive though it may seem, that ‘whiteness’ (and ‘blackness’) is as much achieved as ascribed.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“However, blackness, no less than whiteness, has been and continues to be a socially constructed and therefore highly contentious racial description.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“It was under the umbrella racial category of ‘Caucasian’ that the Irish, Italians, Poles, Germans, and all other populations of European origin found gradual acceptance as full members of the ‘white’ American race. The history of whiteness in the USA in the period from the 1840s to the 1940s shows clearly that colour and racial categorization have a fluidity and instability very much at odds with the conceptions of strict and obvious biological difference implied by the notion of race.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“But crucially, the difficulties surrounding racial classification also meant that definitions of black and white remained indeterminate.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Whiteness (and blackness) have been historically created, and it is necessary to understand some key insights into the formation of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’,”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“In understanding the widespread use of skin-lightening creams among black women in South Africa, the USA, the UK, and many other societies, from Brazil and the Philippines to Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and the Caribbean, the role of white colonialism by the British, Spanish, and Portuguese cannot be underestimated.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“In all their colonies, wealth, power, and beauty were the property of the white elite and the lighter-skinned children of intermarriages and illegal liaisons between white male colonizers and local women.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“In other words, whiteness is relational, and regarded as the norm unless non-whites are encountered and their status as co-citizens acknowledged.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“What would happen to the one-drop rule with regard to whites (the next section will discuss its deployment to identify the black population)?”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“There is little doubt that had de Menezes been blond and blue-eyed, he would not even have entered the police’s surveillance radar.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“There is a lack of understanding on white people’s part that it is not just a question of their own individual prejudice or lack of it, but of how racism works in a systematic and structural form to disadvantage ethnic minorities. And there is a taken-for-granted lens and experience of whiteness which makes for ignorance and blindness to the discrimination that ethnic minorities suffer in white-dominated societies.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Several overriding issues emerge from all this research. White people tend to have a sense that racism is a thing of the past, and when minorities of colour bring up issues of racism they are perceived as bringing in racialization where none existed before, hence the defensiveness and anger with which white people react during discussions of race and racism.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“She remarks, in particular, how white people simply fail to understand how they might be complicit, unwittingly, in shoring up structures of white dominance.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“The non-white person therefore stands accused of a perverse form of racism: ‘reverse racism’.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“Whites simply do not experience either what have come to be called the ‘micro-aggressions’ of everyday racism—habitually being followed by security guards in department stores is one extremely familiar experience; noticing the discomfort of white people in your presence is another”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“This is the paradox of being white and ‘seeing white’, but being to all intents and purposes ‘invisible’ or, more appropriately, as Frankenberg, Garner, and other sociologists of ‘whiteness’ have suggested, ‘unmarked’. In Western societies whites take being white for granted. Their particularity tends to be universalized. It is the default position from which the world is seen, but it also allows them to ‘disappear’ from the foreground of spaces and places, from their own streets to parks and shopping malls.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“This is the paradox of being white and ‘seeing white’, but being to all intents and purposes ‘invisible’ or, more appropriately, as Frankenberg, Garner, and other sociologists of ‘whiteness’ have suggested, ‘unmarked’. In Western societies”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“encounters between police and young black and Asian men are not solely defined by racialization; they become contests of masculinity. Racialization is interwoven with other forms of identity, as we shall see in the discussion of ‘intersectionality’.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction

“no matter whether the individual motivations and behaviour of ordinary white people were racist or not, all whites benefited from social structures and organizational patterns that continually disadvantaged blacks, while allowing whites to stay well ahead in living standards, including housing, health and life span, neighbourhood amenities and safety, educational facilities and achievement, level of employment, and income and wealth.”
― Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction