... assimilationists first used and defined and popularized the term “racism” during the 1940s. All the while, they refused to define their own assimilationist ideas of Black cultural and behavioral inferiority as racist. These assimilationists defined only segregationist ideas of Black biological inferiority as racist. And segregationists, too, have always resisted the label of “racist.” They have claimed instead that they were merely articulating God’s word, nature’s design, science’s plan, or plain old common sense.
Fooled by racist ideas, I did not fully realize that the only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people. I did not fully realize that the only thing extraordinary about White people is that they think something is extraordinary about White people. I am not saying all individuals who happen to identify as Black (or White or Latina/o or Asian or Native American) are equal in all ways. I am saying that there is nothing wrong with Black people as a group, or with any other racial group. That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think that racial groups are equal.
Said I'm three fifths, forgot the other two fifths was God
I only know that it is incredibly sad to admit to your children that you’ve been seeing videos of black men being killed since you were their age and that you haven’t been able to stop it. I only know that I have spent a long time avoiding loving myself so that if I am killed it won’t be that great a loss.
The systemic structure built to keep me in place is the stage I dance on.
Then there are ever-present terms like “racial unity” and “racial division.” America loves to frame race in this country around unity rather than equality. But, to do so robs the oppressed of legitimate grievance. I’ve never understood the aim of bringing people together in unity absent the removal of anti-Black white supremacist social and political frameworks. It is one thing to experience transracial unity with an ally who is fighting just as hard for your liberation as you are. But it is literally impossible for me to unify with someone perfectly happy with the current state of affairs, which included the oppression of people who look like me. Most of these phrases suggest a false premise, that white people and nonwhite ones are operating from equal positions of power in this society and are simply not getting along or agreeing on issues. In other words, by implication, they make nonwhite people equally at fault for the state of race in America, when both history and social science demonstrate, unequivocally, that this is not true.
Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
There is very little relationship between who is locked up and the concept of justice. Americans don't understand that people in prison are often there because of where the policing was. What's more: White people need to start telling the truth about the way this justice system works. Because every white person--particularly middle and upper-class white people--knows that they are not as worried about their children becoming trapped in the system unjustly.
But since the white man, your "friend," took your language away from you during slavery, the only language you know is his language. You know, your friend's language. So you call for the same God he calls for. When he's putting a rope around your neck, you call for God and he calls for God... And you wonder why the one you call on never answers you.
Racism is not only symptomatic of false civilization; it is also a means to maintain the illusion that our civilization is true. Its purpose is not to make sense but to deceive... there are many such opiates of the masses and among the most important must be racism... It is an induced and prolonged state of dreaming that has concealed the truth - not the truth of politics and class interests but the much deeper truth that we are all spiritual beings and that human society should be spiritualized, based on recognition and practice of the oneness of humanity. By diverting attention away from spiritual truth, racism succeeds in keeping open the door to the endless, superficial and ultimately destructive delights of excessive materialism.
To distrust, fear, hate, or discriminate against another person or a whole group on the basis of ethnicity is a spiritual disease. It is also a scourge that infects social structures and causes instability. In this light, eradicating ethnic prejudice requires transformation at the level of both the individual and the social environment.