The Wake Up Quotes

“started noticing how frequently and nonchalantly we as a society rob marginalized people of their freedom to just be and to exist without having to shoulder the burden of solving injustices they did not create while also suffering from them in their daily lives.”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values. —Grace Lee Boggs”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“the challenge with being given limited representation in the first place is that we mistake valid critique as a call for no representation (“So, you’d rather us not have this person/story/movie?”),”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“We cannot solve for inclusion and equity if we don’t first agree there is exclusion and inequity for certain groups of people.”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“we often remind people to distinguish between the idea of safety and comfort. When we fight for safety for the marginalized, what we’re talking about is safety from being discriminated against, harassed, assaulted, fired, or killed by the system and supremacist culture, which has historically criminalized, subjugated, exploited, and violated them and continues to do so.”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“But without paying attention to how and why public protest tactics are used, the phrase cancel culture has been co-opted by those most resistant to the idea of accountability to weaponize and fearmonger, changing the perception of this intervention tool from that of a strategic tactic to a blunt instrument for reactionary public takedowns for seemingly innocuous mistakes or an outright constitutional threat to free speech.”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“We need to stop underestimating racism. There’s nothing we can do today that’s going to stop anti-Asian racism by tomorrow.”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change

“Different cultures perceive time differently: for example, Western cultures tend to view time as linear and limited and punctuality as a way of showing respect for other people’s time, while in Native cultures time is viewed as circular, and one shows respect not through punctuality but in the willingness to stay until the interaction is over or the task is complete.25 With”
― Michelle MiJung Kim, The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change