Alexandra Soos

“Racism is a systematic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen.”
― Omowale Akintunde, Multiculturalism and the Teacher Education Experience

“When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-images of individual actors.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“In debates about the death
penalty, I had started arguing that we would never think it was humane
to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or assault and abuse
someone guilty of assault or abuse. Yet we were comfortable killing
people who kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that
doesn’t implicate our own humanity, the way that raping or abusing
someone would. I couldn’t stop thinking that we don’t spend much time
contemplating the details of what killing someone actually involves.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view, you may not understand why the bird doesn't just go around the single wire and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place in the cage. But if you stepped back and took a wider view, you would begin to see that the wires come together in an interlocking pattern - a pattern that works to hold the bird firmly in place.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism