Garrett

“Isn’t it something,” Hettie said softly, “what ol’ New York really is? We come here to be free and find life’s worse here than back home. The white folks here just color it different. They don’t mind you sitting next to ’em on the subway, or riding the bus in the front seat, but if you asks for the same pay, or wants to live next door, or get so beat down you don’t wanna stand up and sing about how great America is, they’ll bust down on you so hard pus’ll come out your ears.”
― James McBride, Deacon King Kong

“And give no damns that the white kids be looking at us like we don't belong at that school, in their lunchroom, sticking tongs into their salad bars. Fuck no. Don't even know they're in the presence of royalty when they ask, How come you all sit together? without checking their own all-white tables.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone

“The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents