Lynn

“To want to die rather than be dependent and helpless; to try to kill the person you love the most because their future seems mere torment: what does this say about our culture?”
― Nicci Gerrard

“Suddenly Americans feel self-conscious of their white identity and this self-consciousness misleads them into thinking their identity is under threat. In feeling wrong, they feel wronged. In being asked to be made aware of racial oppression, they feel oppressed. While we laugh at white tears, white tears can turn dangerous. White tears, as Damon Young explains in The Root, are why defeated Southerners refused to accept the freedom of black slaves and formed the Ku Klux Klan. And white tears are why 63 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women elected a malignant man-child as their leader.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“Identifying as a woman of colour has been crucial in my understanding of structural politics in society. But this focus hasn't changed the plantation structure, the violence against black bodies and women's bodies. When we stake our primary claim on a racial identity, that identity can be used against us, to keep us in our category, to keep us divided. When we are so divided, it appears that it is impossible to address inequality, because it looks as though we're calling for "sameness" not equality. Which is, of course, not what we want at all.”
― Tessa McWatt, Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging

“These stories relieve me of the pain of belonging nowhere and give me the key to everywhere. As I once longed for a singular place, a singular ethnicity or plot of land over generations, I now long for its opposite, for a space beyond belonging. I have travelled to many places in order to scope a sense of ownership or repatriation, but as I try to square my politics with my privilege, it seems that my only true inheritance is that I am always running somewhere else.”
― Tessa McWatt, Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging