​

• “A child who does not feel the warmth of the village, will burn the village to feel the warmth of the fire.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            - Nigerian Proverb

 

• “I’d like to live; and if the Lord see fit to able me to stay here and see it, I’d love to know that the black race had fully shed the veil from their eyes and the shackles from their feet.  And I hope to God that I won’t be one of the slackers that would set down and refuse to labor to that end.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            - All God’s Dangers:  The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten

 

• “Consumers…have been led to believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America  by Ibram X. Kendi

​

• “Racist progress has consistently followed racial progress.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

 

• “If you study history’s examples of societal change—from the Magna Carter to MLK- you’ll see that it was never about principalities and powers that be.  It was about people, and people grow.  People change.  Regimes, religions, and old-thinking governance might be able to keep a lid on it for a while, but we are human, and human nature is to evolve.  We must hold on for the evolution of ourselves….”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      -  This Is The Fire:  What I Say to My Friends About Racism by Don Lemon

 

• “…when Black lives truly do matter, in macrocosm, we won’t have to hold up Black deaths to prove it.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            -  This Is the Fire by Don Lemon

 

• “I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once the hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           - James Baldwin as quoted in Born Again:  James Baldwin’s America And It’s Urgent Lessons For Our Own by Eddie S.         Glaude Jr.

 

• “To live and move about the world without questioning how the world has shaped and is shaping you is, in a way, to betray the gift of life itself, Baldwin argued.  In our after times, in the full light of the country’s latest betrayal, we have to find the courage to confront honestly the lies that rest in us, if we are to confront and change the lies that confound the nation.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                  -  Born Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

 

• “We have invented the nigger.  I didn’t invent him; white people invented him.  I’ve always known, I had to know by the time I was 17 years old, that what you were describing was not me and what you were afraid of was not me.  It had to be something else, you had invented it so it had to be something you were afraid of and you invested me with….I’ve always known that I am not the nigger.  But, if I am not the nigger, and if it’s true that your invention reveals you, then who is the nigger?  I am not the victim here….So I give you your problem back.  You’re the nigger, baby, it isn’t me.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         - James Baldwin as quoted in  Born Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

​

• The future of the negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of this country….It is entirely up to the American people whether or not they’re going to face and deal with and embrace the stranger who they’ve maligned for so long.  What the white people have to try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a n****r in the first place.  I am not a n****r.  I am a man.  But if you think I’m a n****r, it means your need it….You, the white people, invented him, and you have to find out why.  And the future of the country depends on that.  Whether or not it is able to answer that question.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - The Negro and the American Promise by James Baldwin as quoted in Rich Thanks To Racism: How The Ultra-                    Wealthy Profit From Racial Injustice by Jim Freeman

​

• “The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            -  The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

​

• “Whoever debases others is debasing himself.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     - The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

​

• “To chip away at the humanity of select groups is to chip away at humanity itself.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                -  On The Other Side of Freedom: The Case For Hope by DeRay McKesson

 

• “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.  It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.  One is responsible to life:  It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.  One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.  But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 

 

• “…and this is what it means to be an American Negro, this is who he is—a kidnapped pagan, who was sold like an animal and treated like one, who was once defined by the American Constitution as ‘three-fifths’ a man, and who, according to the Dred Scott decision, had no rights that a white man was bound to respect.  And today, a hundred years after his technical emancipation, he remains—with the possible exception of the American Indian,--the most despised creature in this country.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 - The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

 

• “White people who are quiet about racism might not plant the seed, but their silence is sunlight.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        - On The Other Side of Freedom by DeRay McKesson

 

• “But our power can never be defined by the things we destroy; it must be, must always be, defined by the things we build.”                                                                                                                                                                                                               - On The Other Side of Freedom by DeRay McKesson

 

• “It is the work of white people to undo whiteness.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  - On The Other Side of Freedom by DeRay McKesson

 

• “Remember, some of the most important things you will do is create entrances and on-ramps for people to understand the work in which you engage so that they can then carry the message of the work and the work itself forward.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      - On The Other Side of Freedom by DeRay McKesson

 

• “We need more people to listen far more closely to what People of Color are telling us about the America that they have come to know.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          - Rich Thanks To Racism by Jim Freeman

 

• “We have invested particularly heavily In the criminal justice system within Black and Brown communities while underinvesting in systems that could otherwise address the causes of crime and respond to incidents of crime,”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                - Rich Thanks To Racism by Jim Freeman

 

• "One of the most transformative qualities we can strive to develop as white people grappling with racism and our role in it is humility about the necessary limits of our understanding."  

•  

        - Nice Racism by Robin Deangelo

​

• "The will to be polite, to maintain civility and normalcy, is fearfully strong.  I wonder sometimes how much evil is permitted to run unchecked simply because it would be rude to interrupt it." 

 

         - Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January   as quoted in Nice Racism  

​

• "We need more people to listen far more closely to what People of Color are telling us about the America that they have come to know"  (page 9)

         

          - Rich Thanks To Racism by Jim Freeman

​

• "The goal...it's to get more people to listen far more closely to those who are most affected by systemic racism and then find ways to support efforts to address those injustices."  (page 237)

​​

          - Rich Thanks To Racism by Jim Freeman

​

• "Every white person who hasn't interrogated racism deeply is putting their knee on the necks of People of Color every day"

 

          - Nice Racism :  How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin Diangelo

​

• “Resmaa (Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands:  Racialized Traumas and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies) stressed that the healing path of white people is not about liberating Black and Indigenous people.  It is about what we are going to hand down to our children and our children’s children to make sure that white supremacy dies in the next few generations” 

 

           - Nice Racism by Robin Diangelo

​

• "A key factor in the perpetuation of white-body supremacy is many people's refusal to experience clean pain around the myth of race.  Instead, usually out of fear, they choose the dirty pain of silence and avoidance and, invariably, prolong the pain."                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

           - My Grandmother's Hands:  Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies   Resmaa                      Menakem

​

• “Your body—all of our bodies—are where changing the status quo must begin.”                                                                                                                                                            

         - My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmass Menakem

 

• “Here’s the truth about white bodies:  They are resilient, just like yours or mine.  They can heal, just as  you and I can.  They do not require special attention and care—from you or anyone else—simply because they are white.  All  adults need to learn how to soothe and anchor themselves, rather than expect or demand that others soothe them.  All adults need to heal and grow up….”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

         - My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmass Menakem

​

• "Learning to listen is a virtue that whiteness has often avoided.

 

         - Tears We Cannot Stop:  A Sermon to White America  by Michael Eric Dyson

​

• "I actually think the great evil of American slavery wasn't involuntary servitude and forced labor.  The true evil of American slavery was the narrative we created to justify it.  They made up this ideology of white supremacy that cannot be reconciled with our Constitution, that cannot be reconciled with a commitment to fair and just treatment to all people.  They made it up so they could feel comfortable while enslaving other people...Slavery didn't end in 1865; it just evolved...The North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war."

​​

          - Bryan Stevenson, Vox magazine interview, May 2017 as quoted in Stony The Road/Reconstruction, White Supremacy,                and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry  Louis Gates, Jr.

​

• 'It is time for this country to pay the debt it began incurring 400 years ago, when it first decided that human beings could be purchased & held in bondage.'

         - The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

​​

• "...some appreciable percentage of those who are racialized as white are descended from those who are directly or indirectly culpable for the atrocities of the global racial empire, and all who are now racialized as white enjoy access to certain accumulations of power and privilege that have flowed from that empire.  Some imagine that this helps us explain why white people as such are properly held uniquely responsible for the crimes of global racial empire."  

         - Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi Q. Taiwo  

 

• "One of the great things that the white world does not know, but I think I do know, is that Black people are just like everyone else.  One has used the myth of Negro and the myth of color to pretend and to assume that you were dealing with, essentially, with something exotic, bizarre, and practically, according to human laws, unknown.  Alas, it is not true.  We're also mercenaries, dictators, murders, liars.  We are human too."                                                               

        - 'The Black Scholar Interviews, 1973.  James Baldwin--as quoted in Reconsidering Reparations  by Olufemi Q. Taiwo 

 

• "Without new vision we don't know what to build, only what to knock down.  We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics but a process that can and must transform us."  

        - Freedom Dreams:The Black Radical Imagination by Robin G. Kelley

​

• "Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistence work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God.  And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation."

         - Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi O. Taiwo

​

• "All that is necessary for evil men to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

         - Black Incarceration From The Chain Gang To The Penitentiary by Dennis Childs (page 173)

​

• ​"As a socialist and an alert Black woman, it is clear to me that it is not possible to achieve justice, especially economic justice, and equality under capitalism because capitalism was never designed for that to be the case...The assaults from the present system necessitate that most activists work for reforms, but those of us who are radicals understand that it is possible to do so at the very same time that we work for fundamental change--a revolution."    Barbara Smith, a founding member of the Combaheee River Collective...as quoted in

         - Freedom Dreams by Robin D. G. Kelly.   

​

• "We should think about our ancestors.  But we will win or lose our own ethical battles based on what we do for our descendants.  We are defined by what kind of ancestors we choose to be."  (p.  206)

• "What is done is done.  History has already built the pipes through which advantages and disadvantages flow.  This sets which pipelines will have to be redirected, expanded, or destroyed if we want things to flow differently tomorrow and the next day." (p. 207)

• "That requires me to face the full truth about the legacies I inherit, but also the full truth about the legacy I am right now creating with my own actions and leaving for those who come after me.  If I want to be an ancestor, I should take the kind of steps worth following, and start or continue the kinds of projects work finishing."  (p. 207)

         - Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi O. Taiwo

​

• "The spirit of the times is not only about survival.  It is also about a renewed will to kill as opposed to the will to care, a will to severe all relationships as opposed to the will to engage in the exacting labor of repairing the ties that have been broken."  (p. 107)

• "The main casualty of a "postfact world" is arguably democracy itself.  Democracy has no future in a factless world or in a world without evidence, that is, accountability.  Such a world is, by definition, hostile to the very idea of reason and freedom." (p 110)

• "Intimacy has been replaced by what Jacques Lacan called 'extimacy.'  A different kind of human entangled with objects, technologies, , and other living or animate things is therefore being constituted through and within digital technologies and new media forms.  This i not at all the liberal individual who, not so long ago, we believed could be the subject of democracy." (p 114)

​           - Necro-Politics  by Achille Mbembe (2016)

​

• Aristotle:  "Humanity is divided into two:  the master and the slaves, or if one prefers it, the Greeks and the Barbarians, those who have the right to command, and those who are born to obey."

      Plato: " ...compared the slave to the body, the master to the soul."

      Diogenes:  "...observed that the man who relied on captive labor was the true slave.  Such sophisticated reflections had no         effect on practice.   "

            - The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870  by Hugh Thomas

• "Part of what it means to be constructed as "white," part of what it requires to achieve Whiteness, successfully to become a white person, is a cognitive model that precludes self-transparency and genuine understanding of social realities."   

            - The Racial Contract by  Charles W. Mills (p. 18)

​