Internalized Racism Quotes

“We’re afraid the others will think we’re agringadas because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience.”
― Gloria Anzaldúa

“by virtue of living
in a racist world
nonblack people are
raised to be antiblack
we are all taught that
lighter is better

- undoing”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“If I want to know how I'd have shown up in the last civil rights era, I have to ask myself: How am I showing up today, in this civil rights era?”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Even now I wonder if it was my poor sense of self that first generated my poor sense of my people. Or was it my poor sense of my people that inflamed a poor sense of myself? Like the famous question about the chicken and the egg, the answer is less important than the cycle it describes. Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves, which makes them more vulnerable to racist ideas. Racist ideas make White people think more of themselves, which further attracts them to racist ideas.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“The drive to live in the master’s house is also symbolic of the desire to become like the master. Our colonized consciousness has convinced us that to be is to be like the master. To be Filipino is not good enough—or so we we have been taught (or coerced) to believe. It is a reflection of the internalization of the dark shadows projected by the colonizer onto the colonized. These are shadows from which there is no escape, shadows that will keep haunting until they are withdrawn, atoned for, and integrated within the colonizer’s self”
― Leny Strobel

“An individual may become aware that their sexual fantasies are racially charged or socially inappropriate. As a result, they might attempt to suppress or rationalize their desire by identifying as a supporter of racial equality or anti-racism. This cognitive dissonance leads to a justification of their fantasies as expressions of appreciation for diversity, rather than as symptoms of internalized racial bias.”
― Andrea Sane Romero, The Fetish of Welcome