Quotes from Derald Wing Sue

I feel strongly that it is the selfish person who needs to change, not the selfless person. (Zhang)

c) attaining a racially color-blind society is unattainable and only reinforces racism and societal inequality.

the belief that a race-neutral society can produce procedural justice for all groups and that it will end prejudice and discrimination is not supported by research on color-blind racial ideology.

Yes, we are all the same under the skin, and human beings, but why is being human defined from a White, Western perspective?

Through a process of social conditioning, however, White children are increasingly taught to associate only positive qualities with their own race and negative ones with other racial groups. The process of our cultural conditioning occurs through significant others (Sue, 2003), our educational curriculum (Minow, Shweder, & Markus, 2008), the mass media (Cortes, 2008), and institutions in society (APA Presidential Task Force, 2012; J. M. Jones, 1997).

When people of color talk racism, Whites seem to interpret statements as a personal accusation, and rather than reach out to understand the content, respond in a defensive and protective posture. In many cases, even statements of racial facts/statistics such as definitions of racism, disparities in income and education, segregation of neighborhoods, hate crime figures, and so forth arouse defensiveness in many Whites.

Individuals who have come to recognize and own their biased beliefs and prejudices, their roles in perpetuating racism, the pain their obliviousness has inflicted on people of color, and their privileged and advantaged position in society may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.

While self-change requires becoming a nonracist person, societal change requires becoming an antiracist one.

When educators lack critical consciousness about race/racism, have not adequately dealt with their own racial hang-ups, and are uncomfortable and unprepared to deal with difficult dialogues on race, they become part of the race talk problem (Bell, 2003; Pollock, 2004).

African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans were second-class-status Americans. They were seldom welcomed and were told to stay in their place and not allowed into the mainstream culture of the privileged even when fully acculturated.

multicultural education that has a strong antiracist orientation is of utmost importance in helping children to develop a nonracist identity.

feelings should not be denied, avoided, or suppressed. Rather, the effective facilitator should help others to make sense of them—what do they mean and say about the person? This is a two-prong approach that involves the ability to monitor and attribute meaning to one's own feelings and those of the trainees.

Neville et al. (2013) conclude several things about color-evasion: (a) Ignoring race or color is actually harmful to the well-being of people of color in a highly racially stratified society,

Baron and Banaji (2006) found that implicit and explicit biases diverged as the age of participants increased: (a) At age 6 years, both implicit and explicit attitudes were roughly similar; (b) at age 10 years, the beginnings of a dissociation began to occur—that is, explicit bias began to decline while implicit bias remained unchanged; and (c) at adulthood, explicit bias dropped dramatically, but again implicit bias remained unchanged.

Several important conclusions can be drawn from these studies. First, we have made considerable progress in combating conscious forms of bias and stereotyping.

Second, although successful in dealing with overt expressions of bias, implicit biases in well-intentioned people remain relatively untouched and strong.

Third, although formal education and training seems effective in combating explicit bias, it appears to have less success in ameliorating implicit attitudes.

Fourth, it may be that remediation is less effective than prevention and starting at a young age (childhood) to combat stereotypes may offer a more effective solution.

Last, it is clear that color blindness may be seen as part of a strategy to internally combat recognition of implicitly held biases.

If there is anything that can be termed White culture, it is the synthesis of ideas, values, and beliefs coalesced from descendants of White European ethnic groups in the United States (Barongan et al., 1997).

When Whites feel wrongly accused, they may respond with anger and engage in a counterattack when a racial topic arises. It appears that anger in race talk stems from two sources: (1) feeling unfairly accused (defensiveness) and/or (2) being told their substance, stance, or position taken is wrong. When back talk occurs, many Whites may feel offended and perceive the allegations as a provocation or an attack that requires retaliation.

seems to be that at some level of consciousness, Whites realize that they have lived lies of self-deception and that they do hold responsibility for the current oppression of people of color in the United States, whether through action or inaction (Helms, 1992; Spanierman, Poteat, Beer & Armstrong, 2006; Tatum, 1992).

Our research suggests that successful race talk must allow for the free expression of nested and impacted feelings, acknowledge their legitimacy and importance in dialogues, and be deconstructed so their meanings are made clear (Sue, 2013; Sue et al., 2010; Sue, Torino, et al., 2009).

The European colonization efforts toward the Americas, for example, operated from the assumption that the enculturation of indigenous peoples was justified because European culture was superior (Barongan et al., 1997). Forcing the colonized to adopt European beliefs and customs was seen as civilizing them.