Michelle Meredith

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Michelle.


The Shadow Rising
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Memorial Drive: A...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Loading...
Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Considering segregationist senator Strom Thurmond, Richard Nixon concluded, “Strom is no racist.” There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally. In the era of mass lynching, it was so difficult to find who, specifically, served as executioner that such deaths were often reported by the press as having happened “at the hands of persons unknown.” In 1957, the white residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania, argued for their right to keep their town segregated. “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens.” the group wrote, “we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” This was the attempt to commit a shameful act while escaping all sanction, and I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates
“They were utterly fearless. I did not understand it until I looked out on the street. That was where I saw white parents pushing double-wide strollers down gentrifying Harlem boulevards in T-shirts and jogging shorts. Or I saw them lost in conversation with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles. The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates
“What I want you to know is that this is not your fault, even if it is ultimately your responsibility.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Robin DiAngelo
“To be sure, like the rest of race, whiteness is a fiction, what in the jargon of the academy is termed a social construct, an agreed-on myth that has empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence. But whiteness goes even one better: it is a category of identity that is most useful when its very existence is denied. That’s its twisted genius.”
Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

182179 Book'bassadors — 655 members — last activity May 04, 2019 04:18PM
Book Club specifically for Skimm'bassadors ...more
year in books
Erin Gr...
982 books | 76 friends

Sarah C...
464 books | 208 friends

JFingles
503 books | 44 friends

Jen
Jen
2,100 books | 640 friends

Elizabe...
3,120 books | 103 friends

Elizabe...
198 books | 23 friends

Courtne...
830 books | 164 friends

Jessie ...
570 books | 124 friends

More friends…



Polls voted on by Michelle

Lists liked by Michelle