Daniel Hill > Quotes

“Why does God ask traumatized people to look at the trauma they initiated through their sin and rebellion? For the same reason God asks us to: it is the truth, and we are free only when we lift up the truth.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“Acknowledging that all our land was stolen from Native people feels like too great a burden, so we create an alternative reality that allows us to disengage emotionally from the truth.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“These senators and representatives call themselves “leaders.” One of the primary principles of leadership is that a leader never asks or orders any follower to do what he or she would not do themselves. Such action requires the demonstration of the acknowledged traits of a leader among which are integrity, honesty, and courage, both physical and moral courage. They don’t have those traits nor are they willing to do what they ask and order. Just this proves we elect people who shouldn’t be leading the nation. When the great calamity and pain comes, it will have been earned and deserved. The piper always has to be paid at the end of the party. The party is about over. The bill is not far from coming due. Everybody always wants the guilty identified. The culprits are we the people, primarily the baby boom generation, which allowed their vote to be bought with entitlements at the expense of their children, who are now stuck with the national debt bill that grows by the second and cannot be paid off. These follow-on citizens—I call them the screwed generation—are doomed to lifelong grief and crushing debt unless they take the only other course available to them, which is to repudiate that debt by simply printing up $20 trillion, calling in all federal bills, bonds, and notes for payoff, and then changing from the green dollar to say a red dollar, making the exchange rate 100 or 1000 green dollars for 1 red dollar or even more to get to zero debt. Certainly this will create a great international crisis. But that crisis is coming anyhow. In fact it is here already. The U.S. has no choice but to eventually default on that debt. This at least will be a controlled default rather than an uncontrolled collapse. At present it is out of control. Congress hasn’t come up with a budget in 3 years. That’s because there is no way at this point to create a viable budget that will balance and not just be a written document verifying that we cannot legitimately pay our bills and that we are on an ever-descending course into greater and greater debt. A true, honest budget would but verify that we are a bankrupt nation. We are repeating history, the history we failed to learn from. The history of Rome. Our TV and video games are the equivalent distractions of the Coliseums and circus of Rome. Our printing and borrowing of money to cover our deficit spending is the same as the mixing and devaluation of the gold Roman sisteri with copper. Our dysfunctional and ineffectual Congress is as was the Roman Senate. Our Presidential executive orders the same as the dictatorial edicts of Caesar. Our open borders and multi-millions of illegal alien non-citizens the same as the influx of the Germanic and Gallic tribes. It is as if we were intentionally following the course written in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The military actions, now 11 years in length, of Iraq and Afghanistan are repeats of the Vietnam fiasco and the RussianAfghan incursion. Our creep toward socialism is no different and will bring the same implosion as socialism did in the U.S.S.R. One should recognize that the repeated application of failed solutions to the same problem is one of the clinical definitions of insanity. * * * I am old, ill, physically used up now. I can’t have much time left in this life. I accept that. All born eventually die and with the life I’ve lived, I probably should have been dead decades ago. Fate has allowed me to screw the world out of a lot of years. I do have one regret: the future holds great challenge. I would like to see that challenge met and overcome and this nation restored to what our founding fathers envisioned. I’d like to be a part of that. Yeah. “I’d like to do it again.” THE END PHOTOS Daniel Hill 1954 – 15”
― Daniel Hill, A Life Of Blood And Danger

“It is particularly important for white Americans to approach this subject matter with the right goals in mind. Our goal must be sight, transformation, renewed consciousness.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“We thought Bugles and a Tiger and its sequel, The Road Past Mandalay, plus Bhowani Junction, which was made into a movie starring Ava Gardner as a half-caste (or Chi Chi) East Indian and Stewart Granger playing an Indian Army”
― Daniel Hill, A Life Of Blood And Danger

“Colorblindness minimizes the incarnation of Christ.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“We need a contemplative mind in order to do compassionate action.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“That’s why I so regularly and comfortably repent for the sins of white Christians—both for mine and for the sins of my community. It isn’t because I think I’m better than everybody else or that I’m trying to prove that some bad white Christians out there need to be chastised. No, I repent all the time because I believe I’m surrounded by the sickness of racism. I see the sickness in the ideology of white supremacy and have no doubt that it has infected me. I see the sickness in the narrative of racial difference and have no doubt it has infected me.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“conservative side argue that the solution involves personal responsibility: nurturing the family unit, teaching life skills, instilling morals, and so on. Those on the more liberal side argue that the solution falls more on the side of social justice: addressing root causes such as housing discrimination, failing schools, and the lack of economic opportunity in”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“This continues to be one of the classic combinations that come with early stages in the blindness-to-sight journey: an underestimation of how serious the problem is and an overestimation of our ability to effectively solve the problem.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“I would suggest that first we must contend with the normalization of white culture. While that phrase may sound like a mouthful, it reflects a reality that powerfully shapes our daily interactions, so we must look at it carefully.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“who”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“The theology passed on to us from white forefathers is considered to be the normal, default standard for theology. It is the assumed cultural norm. Everyone else’s theology is defined in relation to whiteness.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“The] melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etcetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.”11”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“In a PBS documentary on race, Bonilla-Silva memorably said it like this: “[The] melting pot never included people of color. Blacks, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etcetera, could not melt into the pot. They could be used as wood to produce the fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be melted into the pot.”11”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“What I would like to emphasize within this section, though, is the high degree of difficulty that leaders in Christian spaces will face when trying to get White folks to engage with the idea of systemic racism.”
― Daniel Hill, White Lies: Nine Ways to Expose and Resist the Racial Systems That Divide Us

“Discovery? Really? Can any thinking person say with a straight face that what Columbus did when he got to America was “discover”? How can one discover a nation that’s already inhabited by millions? Charles highlights how ludicrous this claim is by asking his listeners to consider leaving out their wallet, phone, or iPad so they can experience what it’s like to have their property “discovered.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“If we place too much emphasis on being politically correct or on the hope of avoiding mistakes, we miss the chance to learn humbly from moments of revelation.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“Lament is a beautiful and needed resource because it has a unique way of remaining awake to sorrow without succumbing to it. Lament allows us to grieve injustice but not fall into despair. We can be awake to the pain of the world but still press forward in faith because of another beautiful word at the center of the gospel: hope.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“As Charles points out, this quote gets to the heart of both nations’ problems with race: our citizens do not share a common memory. People of white European ancestry remember a history of discovery, open lands, manifest destiny, endless opportunity, and American exceptionalism. Yet communities of color, especially those with African and indigenous roots, remember a history of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, boarding schools, segregation, cultural genocide, internment camps, and mass incarceration.4 This is the choice that lies before us both as a nation and as individuals: Will we continue to live in denial and allow our home to be built on the weak foundation of myths and half-truths? Or will we have the courage to live up to the truth and allow God’s holy fire to burn down the old and erect a new home that can hold us all?”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“American Christianity (particularly evangelicalism) has often lost sight of a holistic understanding of the gospel. There’s an emphasis on proclamation of the good news, but it tends to be theologically disconnected from demonstration of that good news. There’s an emphasis on loving God as expressed in the Great Commandment, but it’s theologically disconnected from loving neighbor. There’s an emphasis on being reconciled to God through Christ, but it’s theologically disconnected from being sent into the world by Christ as ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20).”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“The system of race, at its core, is a revaluation of human worth.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“It not only leaves the White Christian oblivious to the larger systemic problems created and reinforced through the narrative of racial hierarchy but also leaves them feeling that the work of racial justice is done as long as they have repented”
― Daniel Hill, White Lies: Nine Ways to Expose and Resist the Racial Systems That Divide Us

“But as beautifully simple as repentance is—and it truly is—it can also be frustratingly complex. This is especially true when it comes to white Christians’ cultural identity journey. In many areas of life, repentance seems to come with relative ease, but there’s something different about repentance in regard to race and cultural identity.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

“For King, halfhearted commitment was far more confusing than absolute rejection. He then added an important commentary: I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.”
― Daniel Hill, White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White