Status Updates From Conditional Citizens: On Be...

Eradicating racism in Anerican society is not about turning bad people into good people—an ambition that I think is best left to faith leaders. It is about ensuring that everyone is treated equally, which is a basic duty of a democratic government towards citizens. (101)

But white privilege doesn’t mean that white people have easy lives—it simply means that whiteness does not make their lives harder. (100)

many white people believed themselves to be individually free of racism and resented having to hear about their profiting from its systemic aspects (99)

Racism is a system that gives members of the dominant group both immediate and generational benefits that are not accessible to members of non-dominant groups. (99)

White is a category that has afforded them an evasion from race, rather than an opportunity to confront it… American children are taught inspirational stories about black historical figures… who triumphed over injustice. The perpetrators of that injustice remained largely unnamed. Whiteness is therefore perceived, experienced, and passed down as silence. (97-98)

…human beings, too, are a migratory species. When their natural habitat no longer affords them safety, stability, or opportunity, they leave home and find shelter somewhere new. (70)

Really eye opening, Lalami does a great job of spoon feeding gut wrenchingly difficult to swallow facts.

“What are you?” … “Muslim or human being? It’s impossible to be both” (16)

… a white writer was an individual, responsible only for his or her own creative work, whereas I was a specimen, culled from a group of people these readers found mysterious and perhaps dangerous (43)