Michele

“Try to hear the impact of what you have done. Don't just hear the action: "You consistently speak over me in work meetings and you do not do that to white people in our meetings." That is easy to brush off as, "I just didn't agree with you," or, "I didn't mean to, I was just excited about a point I was trying to make. Don't make a big deal out of nothing." Try to also hear the impact: "Your bias is invalidating my professional expertise and making me feel singled out and unappreciated in a way which compounds all of the many ways I'm made to feel this way as a woman of color in the workplace.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Tone policing is when someone (usually the privileged person) in a conversation or situation about oppression shifts the focus of the conversation from the oppression being discussed to the way it is being discussed. Tone policing prioritizes the comfort of the privileged person in the situation over the oppression of the disadvantaged person. This is something that can happen in a conversation, but can also apply to critiques of entire civil rights organizations and movements.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Note: ‘people like you’ is a good warning that a conversation is about to head into pretty racist territory.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Privilege, in the social justice context, is an advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race