White Privilege Quotes

“Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”

This invisibility is political.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Privilege: A Reader

“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Our police force was not created to serve black Americans; it was created to police black Americans and serve white Americans.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves.”
― Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

“When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
― Adam Rutherford, How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

“What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up – but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you'd be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys.

Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

“You're a Black educated fool, son. These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear.”
― Ralph Ellison

“Paul jumped, unable to hide his surprise. Then he grinned and said, "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. For a Chinese woman, your English is extraordinary. There is not a trace of an accent to be found."
"I have an American accent," she replied dully.
Paul waved her off. "You know what I mean."
Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn more than one language, unlike you?”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“Heterosexual choice is allowed to be the background of a writer’s life; its wallpaper. So is maleness. And whiteness. Step out of that and you will be called a feminist writer, a lesbian writer, a gay writer, a woman writer. A black writer. You will never be called a heterosexual writer or a male writer or a white writer. Those signifiers are absorbed into the single word ‘writer’.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Love

“The average colored person is ten times smarter, wiser, braver, and stronger, than most white people, not because we are genetically superior, but because, when an entire planet is rigged in favor of white colonials over the black, the brown, the latino, arab, indian, chinese, turk, and what not, we have to be exceptional to survive.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“White people can be mediocre, and still respected, glorified even, but rest of us have to be Ramanujans, Rumis, Naskars, just to be regarded as human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Most of the world's geniuses are non-whites, not because it's genetic, but because, like white people inherit blonde hair and blue eyes, or daddy's emeralds, we inherit generational persecution, and any brain forced to endure persecution as daily chore, becomes a powerhouse of apparently supernatural mental faculties.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“When I use the term colonizer, I refer only to those who take pride in colonial exploits, and not to those accountable human beings who happen to descend from colonial ancestors. Colonialism is the enemy, it has nothing to do with skin or ancestry. As long as you stand true on ethics of equality and mettle of character, rather than boasting pedigree and archaic tradition, you are a champion of humanity, no matter your ethnicity, ancestry, profession or status.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“We cannot abolish systemic persecution without dismantling systemic privilege.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“You know how the dinosaurs went extinct - they committed suicide when they saw the white man coming. They said to themselves, clearly white men are the apex predator of earth, so there's no point of us being!

Asteroids wiped out the dinosaurs, caucasteroids wiped out civilizations. Colonialism was a mass extinction event, yet no textbook has the spine to bear the burden.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“When Whiteness Collapses (Sonnet)

When the whites benefit from privilege,
it's part and parcel of colonial heritage,
but when a giant rises from the marginals,
it eclipses the shallow heights of whiteness.

I'm colored, I'm scientist,
I'm poet, I'm polyglot -
coming from zero money,
I won the world with words.

Try and get your puny white brains
around this existence enigma -
compile your white canons of a century,
and they turn bleak next to just one year
of multicultural, multidisciplinary Naskar.

I never grovelled to be included,
I let my vastness out,
and the world queues for my grace.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“I'm colored, I'm scientist, I'm poet, I'm polyglot - coming from zero money, I won the world with words. Try and get your puny white brains around this existence enigma.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“I represent everything that distances Richard Pryor from Peoria, Illinois' ghettos.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“I see us as a black and white version of John and Yoko, a duet of magic and productivity. It feels as though it will last forever. Richard Pryor has finally found his panacea, me.
People look at me as Richard's deliverance: he is the tragic, self- destructive freak no longer.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“As I listen to their jive, I try to find my way around the street mind, the black man's mind. Feeling left out, like an ostracized kid at a playground, I try to join in on the "get down" flavor of the dialogue by calling Richard Pryor a nigger.”
― Jennifer Lee, Tarnished Angel: Surviving in the Dark Curve of Drugs, Violence, Sex, and Fame : A Memoir

“In Colonial English they say: not all muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are muslim. In Naskarian English we say: not all white people are animal, but 99% of historic predators, terrorists, traffickers, thieves, morons and imbeciles were white.

United States has a 9/11 Memorial, Germany has a Holocaust Memorial, but if you endeavor to commemorate the earth victims of White Terrorism, you'll run out of walls before you run out of names.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Not all white people are animal, but 99% of historic predators, terrorists, traffickers, thieves, morons and imbeciles were white.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Not all white people are animal, but 99% of historic predators, terrorists, and traffickers were white.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Both Richard and I sat silent and watched Jennifer Lee. She came across the room and over to us and swept our chess pieces off the board.
“Bastard!” she announced and started back for the door.
“No. Jennifer, I’ve had it with you. You took your clothes off in front of my son. My son came to me and he was crying and I said what’s wrong but he wouldn’t say anything. I made him tell me, Jennifer. He said you came out of your bedroom naked. You showed my son your pussy, woman!”
“And you hit me,” Jennifer accused him. I realized that they were both showing off right in front of me to embarrass the other one.
“And you spit in my face and called me a nigger!” he shot back.
She came back. “Because I wanted to! Damn you!”
“Well, just leave. I told you to leave. Now leave. I’ve done all I could for you, just leave. You would never treat Warren Beatty like you treated me. Or any of those other white boys you star-fucked.”
He turned to me.
“Man, can you imagine her doing that to Warren Beatty?”
I said, “No!”
― Cecil Brown

“We let our simplistic misconceptions about race triumph rather than allow identities to be beautifully complex.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“We are all beautifully complex, and there’s nothing more American than struggling to fit all that complexity into boxes you did not create in the first place.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“Most social issues are rooted in religion, most religious issues are rooted in politics, most political issues are vestiges of colonialism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace