38 Quotes About White Privilege

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck. Malcolm X

Yes beyonce, thank you very very much! ! ! Growing up wasn’t easy for me, even as a boy, then as a black boy, then it was even harder as a black boy who lives in Africa. You might think that white privilege is more prevalent in America but no, it is worse here in Africa were white people are literally worshiped as gods. While growing up as a boy in my teens, i had serious self esteem issues, i didn’t like the color of my skin, i didn’t like my hair, i didn’t like my butt, and i was a boy! ! ! can you believe it? in 2007 i even tried bleaching my skin, lucky for me i bought a fake bleaching cream, translation, it didn’t work. I dyed my hair blonde several times. But after a while i started to get my self esteem in place, the fact that i had so many white folks as friends at that time didn’t help, truth is most white people living here in Africa claim not to be racist but when you catch that stare, hear that comment, see the way they react, you can smell racism all over them. I can give you a simple example, I had a white friend years ago who was an exec at a big oil company here in Nigeria, I had just graduated and needed a job, I spoke to him about it and y’all wont believe what he suggested, well, he suggested I work as his steward. You see, a lot of Nigerians will jump at it, but i smelt racism all over that offer and i wasn’t gonna be a slave to a white man who still had slave-owner tendencies, he totally undermined my degree and felt i was better off as his “slave”.When Beyonce dropped ‘formation’ i was blown away, never before have i felt more proud to be black! ! ! and now her ‘lemonade’ album is here and it is everything the black community needs. Beyonce has ‘black’ going mainstream, her lemonade album has white girls wishing they were black, getting tans, dying their hair black, talking gangster etc. black is the new black. I really do appreciate what bey has done for the black race, now black men and women will walk the streets, heads held high in all their blackness and be proud! ! ! THANKS BEY! ! !. Joseph Ejiro

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning. Barack Obama

You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. They might endure situations you can never know anything about. . Roxane Gay

Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Theodore J. Kaczynski

In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike. Unknown

Bad and cruel as our people were treated by the whites, not one of themwas hurt or molested by our band. (..) The whites were complaining at the same time that we were intruding upontheir rights. They made it appear that they were the injured party, andwe the intruders. They called loudly to the great war chief to protecttheir property. How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make rightlook like wrong, and wrong like right. Black Hawk

Persecution complexes are reaffirming to those who benefit from unearned privileges. DaShanne Stokes

Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't. DaShanne Stokes

Bigotry hurts the economy, so the next time you want to blame minorities for your problems, first take a look in the mirror. DaShanne Stokes

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families. . Michael S. Kimmel

If you defend free speech for bigots but not to combat bigotry, then you believe in bigotry, not free speech. DaShanne Stokes

You're a Black educated fool, son. These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear. Ralph Ellison

Racism is dead only to those who've closed their eyes and ears to the whole world around them. DaShanne Stokes

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one. Nassim Nicholas Taleb

They made you an Amendment and convinced you it meant 'American. Darnell Lamont Walker

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves. Robert Jensen

Privilege is when you can afford to sit back and criticize others who have to fight for the things you take for granted. DaShanne Stokes

White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost. Reni EddoLodge

To be born into, to go to school, to study, to learn, to play, to worship, to love, to work and to die in segregation and not have one single person who loved, mentored or guided me convey that there was any loss. Robin DiAngelo

Whites saying 'make America white again' is like millionaires saying 'make the wealthy rich again. DaShanne Stokes

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came. Robert Winder

Other unsolved murders or untimely deaths were readily blamed on the supposedly sinister Jews: If a Jewish doctor failed to save a life, the whole Jewish community might be attacked and fined. Robert Winder

Whiteness—the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white—is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant society gives to whiteness, we white people are degraded and depraved. Robert Jensen

People buy into this false notion of reverse racism, where they believe that just because there’s a group of people getting together to share something about their heritage that we’re excluding white people. But that’s not the reality. Simon S. Tam

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. Tim Wise

Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. Tim Wise

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive Unknown

..After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. Tim Wise

Today's youth cannot escape the shadow of racism that has been passed down organically from parents and others who cling to a distorted image of American history, one informed by, and articulated from, a worldview permeated by white privilege. [sic], these biases are so hardwired that most of us have no idea how quickly and automatically they kick in and how enduring they can be. Thomas Norman DeWolf

To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend, ” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend, ” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature, ” “history” or “political science.” This invisibility is political. . Michael S. Kimmel

What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up — but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you'd be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal? . Jodi Picoult

Did you ever think our misfortune is directly related to your good fortune? Maybe the house your parents bought was on the market because the sellers didn't want my mama in the neighborhood. Maybe the good grades that eventually led you to law school were possible because your mama didn't have to work eighteen hours a day, and was there to read to you at night, or make sure you did your homework. How often do you remind yourself how lucky you are that you own your house, because you were able to build up equity through generations in a way families of color can't? How often do you open your mouth at work and think how awesome it is that no one's thinking you're speaking for everyone with the same skin color you have? How hard is it for you to find the greeting card for your baby's birthday with a picture of a child that has the same color skin as her? How many times have you seen a painting of Jesus that looks like you? Prejudice goes both ways, you know. There are people who suffer from it, and there are people who profit from it. . Jodi Picoult

White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

How is it that we can punish women who are paid by politicians yet allow freedom and forgiveness to the politicians who pay them? The irony of the situation is that if we allow Sptizer’s deep pockets to buy his way back into our homes and hearts, then it’s not young women he hired who are whores, it’s the people of New York. Valerie Baber