Kater

“The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The film stopped and Colin Jackson was asked for his opinion. After Colin refuted the nonsense with a scientific study – which he was actually a part of – that found that both black and white athletes have the ‘fast twitch’ muscle that is apparently the ‘key’ to sprinting, the commentator’s response was: ‘But are we at the point now where if you are a very talented athlete at fourteen/fifteen/sixteen, and you are white, you are almost institutionally programmed to think that you won’t be able to compete at the highest level in the sprint?’

This is a very revealing question from a white public figure, because when black people assert that representation is important, that having role models you can relate to and who look like you is helpful, they are often accused of making excuses, playing the race card or wanting special treatment. Yet here, before the 200 metres final, was a public service broadcaster asserting that, actually, it does matter, and that seeing black people win, in a competition that no white people have ever been barred by law from entering, or in any way discriminated from participating in, could still discourage white teenagers from bothering to even try. Wow.”
― Akala

“And concepts are crucial to cognition: cognitive scientists point out that they help us to categorize, learn, remember, infer, explain, problem-solve, generalize, analogize. Correspondingly, the lack of appropriate concepts can hinder learning, interfere with memory, block inferences, obstruct explanation, and perpetuate problems.”
― Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract

“It takes work to fear another people that much”
― Akala