Adan Abu-Hakmeh

“Just because you are anti-police, that does not necessarily mean that your whiteness has disappeared or that anti-Black racism is gone. Remember what James Baldwin told us, “White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want.”5 Even Dr. King—yes, the one that even conservatives love to tout as the content-of-your-character caricature—argued that he was disappointed in the “white moderate” who “is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice . . . who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”6 White liberals are who we should be concerned about. Of course, Malcolm X warned us to be aware of the fox and the wolf—by which he meant that white liberals would try and be your friend in order to take advantage of you, but the wolf would always make clear its intentions and commit an act of violence. Finally, let’s not forget the words of South African and Black Consciousness movement freedom fighter Steve Biko, who wrote of white liberals: Instead of involving themselves in an all-out attempt to stamp out racism from their white society, liberals waste lots of time trying to prove to as many blacks as they can find that they are liberal.”
― Kyle T. Mays, An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

“If you interrupt too much and are too aggressive and ready to get in there, you come across as a bitchy, shrill witch,” Cokie said. “And if you don’t talk enough and are polite and wait, then you come across as a wallflower with nothing to say.”
― Lisa Napoli, Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR

“Every study points to the fact that attractive people also earn more money and have higher social status. Needless to say, it is a perpetual loop of economic gender cruelty to require women to pay for their physical upkeep and then to punish them financially for not keeping up when they don’t have the funds.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“It would’ve been easier, I often thought, to have been exactly that variety of half-hearted Muslim, one who could more easily walk away from faith in order to be accepted.”
― Tahereh Mafi, An Emotion of Great Delight