Quotes from Tim Wise

No matter who was here first, whiteness and American identity have been joined at the hip for centuries; the sons and daughters of England, Ireland, Germany, Scotland and the like, have long been able to look in the mirror and see ourselves as the living embodiment of the American ideal. No matter their prior presence on these shores, the black, brown and red have forever and always had to lobby, petition, plead, scrape, fight and even die for the right to lay claim to that ideal as their own.

How do we move from a growing culture of cruelty to a culture of compassion where we not only perceive and relate to our fellow Americans with a sense of solidarity, but in which public policy reflects community, mutual kindness and concern, and where the idea of the common good is revived so as to replace the alienating, disconnected individualism that threatens to destroy us?

You can't organize people if you don't love them. And however hard it can be to love the racists you come in contact with, doing so is the first obligation of a white antiracist.

Facts aside though, I can understand why so many of us might be afraid. As we become anxious, uncertain as to our future and where the nation is headed, that anxiety is being fed around every corner by right-wing commentators bent on using that uncertainty to fuel a political movement. The sad truth is, racial resentments are potent motivators in a nation such as ours, and there is no shortage of mouthpieces prepared to use them to their own ends, a subject to which I now turn.

I have no idea when (or if) racism will be eradicated. I have no idea whether anything I say, do, or write will make the least bit of difference in the world. But I say it, do it, and write it anyway, because as uncertain as the outcome of our resistance may be, the outcome of our silence and inaction is anything but.

That's why, white America, we had no objection to (and indeed supported mightily) the "big government" intervention known as the Homestead Act, passed in 1862, which gave over 200 million acres of essentially "free" land to white families: land that had been confiscated from indigenous people or from Mexico and was then made available to white settlement.

some of us are just too damned stupid to save.

Time to wreck this little shit [A College Student]. The irony of his rant is that once we make his ass famous for this, he will never accomplish anything, his white male-ness notwithstanding...Columbia should expel him. His future should be bleak...Good luck Chip

We live not only in a racialized society, but also in a class system, a patriarchal system, and one of straight supremacy, able-bodied supremacy, and Christian hegemony. These

When we first draw breath outside the womb, we inhale tiny particles of all that came before, both literally and figuratively. We are never merely individuals; we are never alone; we are always in the company of others, of the past, of history.

We don't need guns. We just have to be patient. And wait for your hearts to stop beating. And stop they will. And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told.

Once born, I inherited my family and all that came with it. I also inherited my nation and all that came with that; and I inherited my "race" and all that came with that too. In all three cases, the inheritance was far from inconsequential. Indeed, all three inheritances were connected, intertwined in ways that are all too clear today.

What those inheritances meant, and still mean, is the subject of this inquiry, especially the last of these: What does it mean to be white in a nation created for the benefit of people like you? We don't often ask this question, mostly because we don't have to.

In high school, whites are sometimes asked to think about race, but rarely about whiteness.

This formal system of racial preference was codified from the 1600s until at least the mid-to-late '60s, when the nation passed civil rights legislation, at least theoretically establishing equality in employment, voting, and housing opportunity.

Most racists are less vicious than Nazis, and at the same time, they're considerably harder to deal with. It is precisely the way that gardenvariety racists don't think of themselves as such that makes it tougher to address them, especially because, despite their lack of self-awareness when it comes to their biases, their willingness to deploy the same is legion.

colorblindness doesn't solve the problem of racism. First, it doesn't work. Kids see color, and research suggests they begin to draw conclusions about color-based differences early on. As early as preschool, children have begun to pick up cues about race and gender from popular culture, from parents and from peers, such that they begin to form hierarchies on the basis of those identities.

But nothing works better, nor reeks more strongly of racist and crass political opportunism, than the attacks leveled against immigrants of color, mostly from Mexico and other points in the global South, and the way so many within the chattering class (and even the ranks of elected officials) hope to whip us into hysteria about their presence within our shores.

None of these attacks by leading members of the conservative cognitariat have been accidental or incidental; neither are they the only examples of blatant appeals to white racial resentment and anxiety that have been seen in recent years. They are, however, a good indication that we are far from the post-racial moment that so many saw fit to proclaim after the election of the nation's first president of color.

There are lots of research, of course, saying that a vast majority of us have been exposed to racial biases and stereotypes and, to some extent, we've internalized them, because that's so ubiquitous. That's why I'm so bored with the conversation about who's a racist and who's not.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

Violating the 4th Amendment guarantees against illegal searches and seizures is not the way to solve crime problems.