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1 " And it is as you reap comfort from being white that we suffer for being Black and people of color. This is how we are tied to each other. You see, your comfort is linked to our pain and suffering. "
― George Yancy , Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America
2 " By the way, there is nothing, absolutely nothing at all, that assures me that white America’s collective future will be any different than a miserable failure when it comes to facing the existential necessity of addressing and eradicating white racism. "
3 " Paul Waldman writes: As a white person, I’ll continue to enjoy this [white] privilege almost no matter who I am or what I do. In my heart I could be the most kind-hearted humanitarian or the most vile sociopath. I could be assiduously law-abiding or a serial killer. I can dress in a suit or in torn jeans and a hoodie, and no one will react to me with fear or suspicion, because if they don’t know me they will assume they know nothing. I am myself, nothing more or less. That’s privilege. "
4 " twenty-one-year-old white male Dylan Roof shot and killed nine African Americans as they attended a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. One reason that he gave for the massacre is that, “Y’all are raping our white women. "
5 " While Dear White America was published before Donald Trump’s presidency, the white hatred, vitriol, nasty, and violent threats that I received are totally consistent with the unabashed white supremacist hatred that undergirds and follows from Trump’s election, especially from his own white neofascism, bullying, and his divisive and racially charged, disgusting, and xenophobic rhetoric "
6 " What became clear to me though, is that my white colleague had not experienced racialized trauma. My colleague was threatened because of his exercise of courageous speech. But his whiteness remained unmarked. The objective here is not to judge who suffered more, me or my white colleague. Rather it is important to recognize the specifically white racist hatred that I encountered. How my Black body was assaulted. My white colleague was threatened, but his whiteness was not under attack. "
7 " For me, it feels as if Black embodied existence is in a constant and unrelenting state of trauma. "
8 " It is that white privilege that has implications for my Black body. You see, to be Black in America is to be always already known. And white people assume that they know everything about me. "