Quotes from Robin DiAngelo

The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how.

As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral.

While having friends of color is better than not having them, it doesn't change the overall system or prevent racism from surfacing in our relationships. The societal default is white superiority, and we are fed a steady diet of it 24/7. To not actively seek to interrupt racism is to internalize and accept it.

In aversive racism, the concept of racism is abhorrent to that person. But they're filled with racist conditioning and bias, as we all are. Because that conflicts with their identity as good people, they suppress it and are even more in denial about it. They are even more likely to erupt in defensiveness if it gets called out.

Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward.

The antidote to white fragility is ongoing and lifelong and includes sustained engagement, humility, and education.

You have to be in accountable relationships across race. Accountable means that they're authentic, they're sustained, and that you do talk about racism, and you are able to be given feedback.

I don't believe it's humanly possible to be free of bias.

Most white people cannot answer the question, 'What does it mean to be white?' with any depth or complexity.

Racism has two primary functions: the oppression of people of color, which most people recognize, but also the simultaneous elevation of white people. You can't hold one group down without lifting the other up.

White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.

White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.

I have spent years studying what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race.

Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system.

It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews.

As a social concept, 'white' is profound in its meaning. It means people who either come from or appear to come from Europe, but it's necessarily a construct of oppression.

There's a lot of ways that white women undermine women of color, and black women in particular.

Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels. These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all but which are actually only consistently afforded to white people.

Most whites live, grow, play, learn, love, work and die primarily in social and geographic racial segregation. Yet, our society does not teach us to see this as a loss. Pause for a moment and consider the magnitude of this message: We lose nothing of value by having no cross-racial relationships.

One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked.

Whites have not had to build the cognitive or affective skills or develop the stamina that would allow for constructive engagement across racial divides.

We whites who position ourselves as liberal often opt to protect what we perceive as our moral reputationsrather than recognize or change our participation in systems of inequity and domination.

The language of violence that many whites use to describe anti-racist endeavors is not without significance, as it is another example of how white fragility distorts reality.

While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group.