Jeannette

“racism is a structure, not an event.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“In August, Douglass righteously claimed that “everyone knows that this is the slaveholders’ rebellion and nothing else.” The war, he said, was the work of a “privileged class of irresponsible despots, authorized tyrants and blood-suckers, who fasten upon the Negro’s flesh, and draw political power and consequence from their legalized crimes.”
― David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would have removed him.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“Teaching children about great men enforced a sense of a great nation, a version of history which could be distributed along the length and breadth of vast empires. Controlling access to the past controls populations in the present, and determining who writes history can affect thought and behaviour. Famously the Nazis created a version of German history which cherry-picked and repackaged information so as to benefit the regime's agenda.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it