Quotes About Antiracism

I don't think the job of the antiracist is to convert the far-out heathen racist, or give them their 'come to Jesus' moment, as it's called. They'll either have those or they won't, and usually, when they have them, it's not because of something someone said per se; it's because of some life crisis that makes them rethink.

But still: antiracists need to listen more to the enemy. Because antiracism only exists to fight racists; it only has meaning oppositionally. If there were no racists, there would be no antiracists. And the racists say: Jews are not white. The Nazis said it all the time—the project of the Jews, as far as they were concerned, was to undermine the Aryan white races. And the exclusion of Jews from the category of whiteness is still key to present-day white supremacists.

Antiracists must acknowledge that patriarchy has long been a weapon of racism and cannot sit comfortably in any politic of racial transformation.

appears that strong personal, institutional, and cultural forces work against antiracist actions on the part of White Americans who become liberated and aware of the dynamics of racism and Whiteness.

Becoming antiracist, therefore, may mean significant changes in how Whites live their lives and may alter their relationships with family, friends, and coworkers as well as affect the environments in which they live (neighborhoods, communities, schools, and worksites).

the potential White ally must find others who will walk with him or her, encourage him or her to continue the journey, and form new friendships and partnerships, especially among people of color. Studies suggest that antiracist people have greater racial diversity among friends, support affirmative action, possess greater cultural sensitivity and empathy, and are more prone to take social action to rectify injustices (Spanierman et al., 2009).

Children can't learn antiracism if they don't have the practice of observing, naming, and discussing race in their tool kit.

So much feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended; that sexism and racism are fundamental to the injustices of late capitalism; that they matter.

So much of feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended

Black women's intersectional experiences of racism and sexism have been a central but forgotten dynamic in the unfolding of feminist and antiracist agendas.

The relevant question is not whether all Whites are racist but how we can move more White people from a position of active or passive racism to one of active antiracism.

White people who are doing this work [white antiracism] need to continue to make their stories known to serve as guides for others.

But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt - unless they are actively antiracist - they will find themselves carried along with the others.

In a quirk of political fate, Libchaber's own life was saved by the protection of a local chief of the Pétain secret police, a man whose fervent right-wing beliefs were matched only by his fervent antiracism. After the war, the ten-year–old boy returned the favor. He testified, only half-comprehending, before a war crimes commission, and his testimony saved the man.

The opposite of racism is antiracism, of course, or what we might call racial idealism or equalitarianism, and it is still not clear whether it will prevail. In this struggle, our history textbooks offer little help. Just as they underplay white racism, they also neglect racial idealism. In doing so, they deprive students of potential role models to call upon as they try to bridge the new fault lines that will spread out in the future from the great rift in our past.

Really, everyday antiracism requires both addressing people's experiences in the world as racial group members and refusing to distort people's experiences, thoughts, or abilities by seeing them only or falsely through a racial lens.