MGordy

“These were people that would have been called “real black” by people I grew up with who often used such terms to point out how “not black” my education, speech, and fashion sense obviously made me.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Have these conversations, not just with people of other races—and I know that’s why the majority of you are reading this book. You should be having these conversations with people of your own race as well. White people—talk about race with other white people. Stop pretending that you are exempt from the day-to-day realities of race. Take some of the burden of racism off of people of color. Bring it into your life so that you can dismantle racism in the white spaces of your life that people of color can’t even reach. People of color, talk to your people about race. Feel the therapeutic effects of honest and safe conversation about race. Examine and confront your internalized racism. Make space to heal and rejuvenate.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“This shifting of terminology should not distract us from this underlying truth: We have created a caste system in this country, with African Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies. Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied and their effects endure.”
― Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

“Talk. Please talk and talk and talk some more. But also act. Act now, because people are dying now in this unjust system. How many lives have been ground up by racial prejudice and hate? How many opportunities have we already lost? Act and talk and learn and fuck up and learn some more and act again and do better. We have to do this all at once. We have to learn and fight at the same time.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race