Crystal Marie Fleming > Quotes

“The bottom line is that white supremacy is about resources: who gets (and retains) access to them, who gets excluded, whose lives are made to matter, and whose lives are rendered disposable.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Have you ever wondered how people lived with slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching but looked the other way? Look around right now. This is how they did it. They did it by going on with their lives. They did it by being polite, not rocking the boat.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“The news industry isn’t just a mirror reflecting society’s racism. It’s a megaphone.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Growing beyond our racial ignorance—and getting serious about disrupting white supremacy—requires developing an intersectional sensibility: awareness of interlocking systems of oppression and concern for a wide variety of marginalized groups. To put it bluntly: if you’re not thinking about race intersectionally, then you’re not thinking about race intelligently.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Once you realize that a racist society inevitably socializes its citizens to absorb racist ideas and behave in a discriminatory way, then you’re less likely to be preoccupied with adjudicating whether an individual is or is not “a racist.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“mean, you know things are really bad when a gotdamn ice-cream company has to debunk the pervasive belief that racial oppression is a thing of the past because schools, academics, politicians, and journalists are failing to do so.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“As a system, white supremacy needs people to believe that it (1) doesn’t exist, (2) has been overcome, or (3) only exists among extremists. White supremacy can’t tolerate millions of people finally realizing that it is pervasive and systemic. It needs us ignorant and hopeful. And”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“But it appears that many reporters and news professionals believe their job is to distort racial reality, drive up the ratings, and cape for white supremacy.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Since the inception of this country, laws and legal practices systematically favored whites economically, politically, and socially. In”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“of bell hooks’s Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Instead, black feminists insist that our intersectional differences should not be ignored or sublimated but, rather, must inform our efforts to challenge multiple forms of injustice.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent,”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“providing a platform for white nationalists and presenting white supremacy as “just another side” is really fucking racist.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“systemic racism is reproduced and extended through everyday practices that allow people to live in a racist society but fail to make meaningful connections between their own observations, their nation’s history, and broader patterns of domination.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Social psychological experiments have actually shown that it is more difficult for individuals to visually recognize weapons when they’ve been exposed to an image of a white face. In other words, linking nonwhiteness with criminality and whiteness with innocence makes us far less likely to accurately see what is happening right before our eyes.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“white supremacy” was not merely about a few racist extremists but rather about a system of domination that stretched into the present day and affected every sphere of society.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Jay MacLeod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Achievement in a Low-Income Neighborhood”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Anyone who has ever studied racism knows that though people of color tend to be more knowledgeable about racism (due to direct experience) and more opposed to racial oppression than whites, they can also actively participate in maintaining white supremacy—and be rewarded for doing so through their individual advancement (while members of their racial group remain collectively oppressed). Prominent examples include Booker T. Washington, Clarence Thomas, Dinesh D’Souza, and Barack Obama. Yeah, I said it: your man Barack. We’ll come back to Obama’s role in whitewashing white supremacy in chapter 3. THE”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“In order to promote the cause of racial justice, antiracists need to recognize and actively reject false equivalencies between dominant and dominated groups.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“It means becoming familiar with the typical tropes of minimization, deflection, and denial that allow racism to persist unrecognized and/or justified on a daily basis. And it means going far beyond “calling out” your racist friend or family members for their racist comments and behavior (something the vast majority of whites do not do). If we are ever to move beyond this racial order, then we will also have to dismantle the system of unearned privilege attached to being socially defined as “white.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“When students ask me for direction, I try to convey to them the importance of choosing an area of impact that bridges their interests with their unique talents. But in order to do this, you have to invest some time and energy in self-exploration. No one can tell you what your purpose is (that’s your job), but if you are having a hard time narrowing down your talents, you might ask friends, family members, and mentors to help you identify your gifts and strengths. Perhaps you have a knack for artistic expression, a facility with numbers, a photographic memory, or an interest in history. How can you leverage your set of skills and talents to help improve society? Answering this question can help you figure out what piece of the social justice puzzle you want to focus on, knowing that you can’t do everything. You should also remember that your answer to this question can change over time. Maybe you get involved with political activism for a while and then move on to empowering communities of color through education or health-care advocacy. You don’t have to be a “single-issue” antiracist, but I do recommend selecting a few areas to build your knowledge and maximize your impact.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“When social scientists describe racism as “systemic,” we’re referring to collective practices and representations that disadvantage categories of human beings on the basis of their perceived “race.” The key word here is “collective.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“debunking the myth of color blindness but also because they helped develop powerful theories of white supremacy as a pervasive system of racial oppression, rather than the narrow idea that white supremacy can only be found in the beliefs and practices of white nationalists.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.1”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Jordan Peele’s hit racial horror flick, Get Out.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“As I would come to see clearly, dominant discourses of individualism, exceptionalism, and meritocracy work to sustain collective denial about racism and other forms of injustice.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“Complicating our understanding of black womanhood means realizing that if our trans sisters aren’t free from violence and terror, then none of us are free.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“through [whites’] indifference, inertia and lack of courage.”21”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“interpersonal and institutional racism are connected.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“A true moral revolution requires letting go of the need to elevate those who justified exploitation, murder, and oppression.”
― Crystal Marie Fleming, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide