“
In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.
”
”
Czesław Miłosz
“
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
”
”
Elie Wiesel
“
I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
“
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
”
”
George Orwell (Why I Write)
“
The adult members of churches today rarely raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being thought of as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.
”
”
Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
“
If greed were not the master of modern man--ably assisted by envy--how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher "standards of living" are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich societies--where organized along private enterprise or collective enterprise lines--to work towards the humanisation of work? It is only necessary to assert that something would reduce the "standard of living" and every debate is instantly closed. That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done--these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence--because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.
”
”
Ernst F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered)
“
Ridiculous to think what indignities I would suffer in silence, if I knew that I was to be rewarded with an oversize bucket of hot water," the magus said as he settled into the bath the servants had filled for him.
”
”
Megan Whalen Turner (A Conspiracy of Kings (The Queen's Thief, #4))
“
I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
“
Oxford was not a conspiracy of silence as far as women were concerned; it was a conspiracy of ignorance.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
“
Weird—no one is this popular, There wasn't a single negative comment, which made Micah even more suspicious. Some sort of parishioner conspiracy of silence? Could the church organize everyone's silence on a grand scale? Can all church members be this loyal? Were they paid off?
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent.
Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?)
“
Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly.
”
”
Vladimir Lenin (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition (Illustrated))
“
When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a s**t you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is and there is no use crying over spilt milk.
”
”
Kingsley Amis
“
Men write more books. Men give more lectures. Men ask more questions after lectures. Men post more e-mail to Internet discussion groups. To say this is due to patriarchy is to beg the question of the behavior's origin. If men control society, why don't they just shut up and enjoy their supposed prerogatives? The answer is obvious when you consider sexual competition: men can't be quiet because that would give other men a chance to show off verbally. Men often bully women into silence, but this is usually to make room for their own verbal display. If men were dominating public language just to maintain patriarchy, that would qualify as a puzzling example of evolutionary altruism—a costly, risky individual act that helps all of one's sexual competitors (other males) as much as oneself. The ocean of male language that confronts modern women in bookstores, television, newspapers, classrooms, parliaments, and businesses does not necessarily come from a male conspiracy to deny women their voice. It may come from an evolutionary history of sexual selection in which the male motivation to talk was vital to their reproduction.
”
”
Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature)
“
[U]nhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson
“
Yes, people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.
”
”
Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me)
“
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
”
”
John F. Kennedy
“
Cole is a man, a hero. A friend. Toxic is a choice.
”
”
Ronie Kendig (Conspiracy of Silence (Tox Files, #1))
“
Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it.
”
”
Maria Mies (Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour)
“
From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live! ("A Tough Tussle")
”
”
Ambrose Bierce (Ghost Stories (Haunting Ghost Stories))
“
Why does the mind interfere at all? Because the mind is created by society. It is society’s agent within you; it is not in your service, remember! It is your mind, but it is not in your service; it is in a conspiracy against you. It has been conditioned by society; society has implanted many things in it. It is your mind but it no longer functions as a servant to you, it functions as a servant to society. If you are a Christian then it functions as an agent of the Christian church, if you are a Hindu then your mind is Hindu, if you are a Buddhist your mind is Buddhist. And reality is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist; reality is simply as it is.
”
”
Osho (Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence)
“
(b) those who endorse a color-blind ideology actually engage in a higher rate of racially insensitive behaviors, and
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
Denial is our shield. We don’t yet know the damage we perpetuate by cutting ourselves off from the past, by maintaining our conspiracy of silence. We are convinced that the more securely we lock the past away, the safer and happier we will be.
”
”
Edith Eger (The Choice: Embrace the Possible)
“
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
”
”
John F. Kennedy
“
Bad floor! Bad! Just because drunk people always end up drooling on you, that’s no reason to be vindictive. How could you want to hurt those cute little piggies? Can’t you see how well they dance?’
‘Mr Linton, I think I’d better get you upstairs to your room.’
‘No! I need to have a serious talk with this floor.’
‘There’s plenty of floor upstairs, Mr Linton.’
Really? Damn! This was a conspiracy.
”
”
Robert Thier (Hunting for Silence (Storm and Silence, #5))
“
Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4
”
”
Alfred W. McCoy (Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation)
“
They say the stars are full of secrets, kept quiet by the silence of the night.
”
”
L. Danvers (Conspiracy Unleashed: A Space Fantasy Thriller)
“
(c) attaining a racially color-blind society is unattainable and only reinforces racism and societal inequality.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
When a man goes silent on his ways and plans, you must ponder!
”
”
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
“
One doesn't go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. --Tzivia Khalon
”
”
Ronie Kendig (Conspiracy of Silence (Tox Files, #1))
“
About time someone dug that heart out of your butt
”
”
Ronie Kendig (Conspiracy of Silence (Tox Files, #1))
“
It's as if there is a conspiracy of silence among men — a brotherhood — to let each other off the hook.
”
”
Victor Malarek (The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It)
“
There can be no cancellation of accomplished facts; but for practical purposes a conspiracy of silence is almost as effective as cancellation. Unmentioned, what is can become as though it were not.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)
“
The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder. The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, and was created by the CIA in the 1950’s under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control programs. Experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation,
electro-convulsive treatment, brain electrode implants and hypnosis were designed to create amnesia, depersonalization, changes in identity and altered states of consciousness. (p. iii)
“Denial of the reality of multiple personality by these doctors [See page 114 for names] in the mind control network, who are also on the FMSF [False Memory Syndrome Foundation] Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, could be disinformation. The disinformation could be amplified by attacks on specialists in multiple personality as CIA conspiracy lunatics” (P.10)
“If clinical multiple personality is buried and forgotten, then the Manchurian Candidate Programs will be safe from public scrutiny. (p.141)
”
”
Colin A. Ross (Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists)
“
No Australian today is responsible for what happened on our colonial frontier. But we are responsible for not acknowledging what happened. If we do not, our integrity as a nation is flawed and we are shamed as a people for perpetuating a lie.
”
”
Timothy Bottoms (Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland's Frontier Killing Times)
“
Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story's silent twin. There are so many things we can't say, because they are too painful. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson
“
From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch-and-kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the President’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.
”
”
Michael Cohen (Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump)
“
Few of us can fully appreciate the terrible conspiracy of noise there is about us, noise that denies us the silence and solitude we need for this cultivation of the inner garden. It would not be hard to believe that the archenemy of God has conspired to surround us at every conceivable point in our lives with the interfering noises of civilization that, when left unmuffled, usually drown out the voice of God. He who walks with God will tell you plainly, God does not ordinarily shout to make Himself heard. As Elijah discovered, God tends to whisper in the garden.
Ordering Your Private World, pg. 126
”
”
Gordon MacDonald (Ordering Your Private World)
“
Have they lost the same things Béla and I have lost? We don’t talk about it. Denial is our shield. We don’t yet know the damage we perpetuate by cutting ourselves off from the past, by maintaining our conspiracy of silence. We are convinced that the more securely we lock the past away, the safer and happier we will be.
”
”
Edith Eger (The Choice: Embrace the Possible)
“
Judge Carter sat in stony silence, completely unmoved. At the end of the trial, he pronounced King guilty of conspiracy to violate the 1921 law and ordered him to pay a five-hundred-dollar fine or serve a year at hard labor. Like Judge Carter, the national newspaper and magazine reporters waiting outside for the ruling ignored the black women's testimonies that detailed decades of mistreatment and denied King's leadership in the boycott. Instead, the media turned King into an apostle of civil rights.
”
”
Danielle L. McGuire (At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power)
“
While self-change requires becoming a nonracist person, societal change requires becoming an antiracist one.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
Yes, we are all the same under the skin, and human beings, but why is being human defined from a White, Western perspective?
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
multicultural education that has a strong antiracist orientation is of utmost importance in helping children to develop a nonracist identity.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
Where people lived and breathed what they believed rather than putting it on for Sunday service.
”
”
Ronie Kendig (Conspiracy of Silence (Tox Files #1))
“
المعارضة العملية لا تسقط نظاماً وإنما الصمت المفروض هو الذي يلد المؤامرات والإنقلابات
”
”
مصطفى أمين (تحيا الديمقراطية)
“
the belief that a race-neutral society can produce procedural justice for all groups and that it will end prejudice and discrimination is not supported by research on color-blind racial ideology.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
I’m a firm believer that ultimately the truth cannot hurt you. It can bring you pain, heartache, and sadness but it cannot destroy the person you are. It can bring you understanding of whom and what you are.
”
”
Martha Powers (Conspiracy of Silence)
“
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
”
”
ohn F. Kennedy
“
The government silenced a lotta those fellas. They even erased some of ‘em’s memory. They’ve spent a ton of money on all that alien technology research. It’s why the federal deficit’s so big. And then there’s Elvis.
”
”
Angela Mullins (Working for Uncle Henry)
“
African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans were second-class-status Americans. They were seldom welcomed and were told to stay in their place and not allowed into the mainstream culture of the privileged even when fully acculturated.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
When educators lack critical consciousness about race/racism, have not adequately dealt with their own racial hang-ups, and are uncomfortable and unprepared to deal with difficult dialogues on race, they become part of the race talk problem (Bell, 2003; Pollock, 2004).
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
In many respects, anger and defensiveness may become so aroused that the person loses control of their self-monitoring capacities and the ability to accurately assess the external environment. These latter two characteristics are extremely important for a successful dialogue on race.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
Individuals who have come to recognize and own their biased beliefs and prejudices, their roles in perpetuating racism, the pain their obliviousness has inflicted on people of color, and their privileged and advantaged position in society may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
His whole life was a conspiracy of other people helping him, other people teaching him this or that. He felt like Hamlet, just moping around waiting for the world to assuage his grief, petulantly soliloquizing and fainting while everyone else fed him bananas and candy bars. Hamlet died at the end, of course. “The rest is silence,” Hamlet declared,
”
”
Kaveh Akbar (Martyr!)
“
18. A third powerful factor in the diffusion of communism is the conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world. We say conspiracy, because it is impossible otherwise to explain how a press usually so eager to exploit even the little daily incidents of life has been able to remain silent for so long about the horrors perpetrated in Russia, in Mexico and even in a great part of Spain; and that it should have relatively so little to say concerning a world organization as vast as Russian communism. This silence is due in part to short-sighted political policy, and is favored by various occult forces which for a long time have been working for the overthrow of the Christian Social Order.
”
”
Pope Pius XI (Divini Redemptoris: On Atheistic Communism)
“
The absence of authority in the face of obscene criminality prompts delusions, peddled by propagandists and true believers alike, that noble actors are fighting the good fight but Must Keep Silent for Reasons You Will Understand in Time. In order for this delusion to hold, the sound of their silence must drown out the evidence heard with your own ears. They are dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, the cult of the savior state bleats, they are playing 3-D chess, they are reeling in the big fish, they are aiming for the king so they best not miss, they can’t show their cards without ruining their hand, they’re getting all their ducks in a row, the dam is breaking, the storm is here, they’ve got this, be patient, be quiet, relax, trust the plan.
”
”
Sarah Kendzior (They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent)
“
The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed. Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want. They lean with the prevailing winds and employ every fallacy of logic in order to editorialize harmoniously with popular prejudices. They also keep a close eye on possible economic reprisals from the Councils and the Klans, plus other superpatriotic groups who bring pressure to bear on the newspapers’ advertisers. In addition, most adhere to the long-standing conspiracy of silence about anything remotely favorable to the Negro. His achievements are carefully excluded or, when they demand attention, are handled with the greatest care to avoid the impression that anything good the individual Negro does is typical of his race.
”
”
John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me)
“
When people of color talk racism, Whites seem to interpret statements as a personal accusation, and rather than reach out to understand the content, respond in a defensive and protective posture. In many cases, even statements of racial facts/statistics such as definitions of racism, disparities in income and education, segregation of neighborhoods, hate crime figures, and so forth arouse defensiveness in many Whites.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
"I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference.
"I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words."
"Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
"I have. I sent you some."
"But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more."
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said:
"I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket."
He barked again and subsided.
Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
"What? Naturally not."
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging.
"Do you ever go to them?"
"No--almost never."
"Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?"
Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue."
"Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write--that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Love of the Last Tycoon)
“
I vote you read and we fellows will listen in rapt silence.” “And thus Kit is indoctrinated into the conspiracy to which all males belong,” Sophie muttered. “And you ladies don’t have conspiracies of your own?” He brought the child to his shoulder and started rubbing Kit’s little back. The sight sent odd tendrils of warmth drifting through Sophie’s insides. “We women are cooperative by nature; that’s different from conspiratorial.” She
”
”
Grace Burrowes (Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish (The Duke's Daughters, #1; Windham, #4))
“
Through a process of social conditioning, however, White children are increasingly taught to associate only positive qualities with their own race and negative ones with other racial groups. The process of our cultural conditioning occurs through significant others (Sue, 2003), our educational curriculum (Minow, Shweder, & Markus, 2008), the mass media (Cortes, 2008), and institutions in society (APA Presidential Task Force, 2012; J. M. Jones, 1997).
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
The audience howled as Trump sat in silence, cracking a tepid smile. I couldn’t begin to guess what went through his mind during the few minutes I spent publicly ribbing him. What I knew was that he was a spectacle, and in the United States of America in 2011, that was a form of power. Trump trafficked in a currency that, however shallow, seemed to gain more purchase with each passing day. The same reporters who laughed at my jokes would continue to give him airtime. Their publishers would vie to have him sit at their tables. Far from being ostracized for the conspiracies he’d peddled, he in fact had never been bigger.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
Other groups of color need to acknowledge the courage of Black America, and our indebtedness to them for what we have learned from their struggles. Although all groups can recount their own unique struggles for equal rights, African Americans have always been in the forefront in advocating for social justice. Many other groups of color (and other marginalized groups—women and LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer] individuals) have learned much from the Black movement, including the importance of group identity, and have profited from the work, struggle, and sacrifice of African American brothers and sisters.
”
”
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
“
So, basically, to put off the old person and put on the new we only follow Jesus into the activities that he engaged in to nurture his own life in relation to the Father. Of course, his calling and mission was out of all proportion to ours, and he never had our weaknesses, which result from our long training in sin. But his use of solitude, silence, study of scripture, prayer, and service to others all had a disciplinary aspect in his life. And we can be very sure that what he found useful for conduct of his life in the Father will also be useful for us. It was an important day in my life when at last I understood that if he needed forty days in the wilderness at one point, I very likely could use three or four.
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Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
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Yet historians still start their books with a ritual lament about 'the sources' and their inadequacy. The lament is not entirely insincere (though it is something of a self-constructed problem): the sources often are inadequate for the particular questions that historians choose to pose. But that is part of the ancient-historical game: first pick your question, then demonstrate the appalling difficulty of finding an answer given the paucity of the evidence, finally triumph over that difficulty by scholarly 'skill'. Prestige in this business goes to those who outwit their sources, prising unexpected answers from unexpected places, and who play the clever (sometimes too clever) detective against an apparent conspiracy of ancient silence.
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Mary Beard (Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations)
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heroin pipeline whose outlet is Beirut. These eighteen men, all experts in conspiracy, in the highest ranges of secret communication and action and, above all, of silence, also shared one supreme virtue – every man had a solid cover. Every man possessed a valid passport with up-to-date visas for the principal countries in the world, and an entirely clean sheet with Interpol and with their respective national police forces. That factor alone, the factor of each man’s cleanliness after a lifetime in big crime, was his highest qualification for membership of SPECTRE – The Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. The founder and chairman of this private enterprise for private profit was Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
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Ian Fleming (Thunderball (James Bond, #9))
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There has been abuse and misunderstanding, no doubt, but the power of solitude, silence, meditative study, prayer, sacrificial giving, service, and so forth as disciplines are simply beyond question. This is a field of knowledge, and we remain ignorant of it to our great disadvantage. However, the disciplines do not confirm their value to those who only talk about them or study them “academically” or hear others talk about them. One has to enter them with Jesus as teacher to find the incredible power they have to change one’s world and character. They are self-confirming when entered in faith and humility. And you don’t really need much of faith and humility if you will just stay with them. They will do the rest because they open us to the kingdom.
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Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
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The most important thing that is happening in the world right now is the emerging of the new man.
Since the monkeys, man has remained the same, but a great revolution is on it's way. When monkeys became man, it created the mind. With the new man, a great revolution will bring the soul in. Man will not just be a mind, a psychological being, he will be a spiritual being.
This new consciousness, this new being, is the most important thing, which is happening in the world today. But the old man will be against the emerging of the new man, the old man will be against this new consciousness.
The new man is a matter of life and death, it is a question of the survival of the whole earth. It is matter of survival of consciousness, of survival of life itself.
The old man has become utterly destructive. The old man is preparing for a global suicide right now. Rather than allowing the new man, the old man would rather destroy the whole earth, destroying life itself.
The old destructive man is preparing right now for a third world war. The global economical and political elite and the war industrial complex in the U.S, which runs the foreign policy of the U.S, is right now promoting for a third world war.
The U.S. has over thrown the democratically elected government in Ukraine in an secret operation by the CIA, the world's largest terrorist organization, and replaced it with a fascistic regime, a marionette for the U.S.
The war industrial complex is now desperately trying to promote the third war by demonizing, lying and blaming Russia. We see the same aggression and lies from the U.S. that we have seen before against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and Iran.
President Eisenhower warned against the war industrial complex, which he considered the largest threat to democracy. President John F. Kennedy also warned against a "secret conspiracy" against democracy. The war industrial complex consists of the international banks, oil companies, war industry, democratically elected politicians, conservative think tanks, international mainstream media and global companies, who make profits from human suffering and wars.
The European governments and the mainstream media also cooperate with the war industrial complex to bring the world into disaster.
But this time it will not work as the time for wars is over, and peace loving people and people who represent the new man are working against this kind of aggression.
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Swami Dhyan Giten
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There followed a three-year spectacle during which [Senator Joseph] McCarthy captured enormous media attention by prophesying the imminent ruin of America and by making false charges that he then denied raising—only to invent new ones. He claimed to have identified subversives in the State Department, the army, think tanks, universities, labor unions, the press, and Hollywood. He cast doubt on the patriotism of all who criticized him, including fellow senators. McCarthy was profoundly careless about his sources of information and far too glib when connecting dots that had no logical link. In his view, you were guilty if you were or ever had been a Communist, had attended a gathering where a supposed Communist sympathizer was present, had read a book authored by someone soft on Communism, or subscribed to a magazine with liberal ideas. McCarthy, who was nicknamed Tailgunner Joe, though he had never been a tail gunner, was also fond of superlatives. By the middle of 1951, he was warning the Senate of “a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.”
McCarthy would neither have become a sensation, nor ruined the careers of so many innocent people, had he not received support from some of the nation’s leading newspapers and financing from right-wingers with deep pockets. He would have been exposed much sooner had his wild accusations not been met with silence by many mainstream political leaders from both parties who were uncomfortable with his bullying tactics but lacked the courage to call his bluff. By the time he self-destructed, a small number of people working in government had indeed been identified as security risks, but none because of the Wisconsin senator’s scattershot investigations.
McCarthy fooled as many as he did because a lot of people shared his anxieties, liked his vituperative style, and enjoyed watching the powerful squirm. Whether his allegations were greeted with resignation or indignation didn’t matter so much as the fact that they were reported on and repeated. The more inflammatory the charge, the more coverage it received. Even skeptics subscribed to the idea that, though McCarthy might be exaggerating, there had to be some fire beneath the smoke he was spreading. This is the demagogue’s trick, the Fascist’s ploy, exemplified most outrageously by the spurious and anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so. “Falsehood flies,” observed Jonathan Swift, “and the truth comes limping after it.” McCarthy’s career shows how much hysteria a skilled and shameless prevaricator can stir up, especially when he claims to be fighting in a just cause. After all, if Communism was the ultimate evil, a lot could be hazarded—including objectivity and conventional morality—in opposing it.
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Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
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[Description of the behind-the-scenes situation of the Beer Hall Putsch]
The crowd began to grow so sullen that Goering felt it necessary to step to the rostrum and quiet them. “There is nothing to fear,” he cried. “We have the friendliest intentions. For that matter, you’ve no cause to grumble, you’ve got your beer!” And he informed them that in the next room a new government was being formed.
It was, at the point of Adolf Hitler’s revolver. Once he had herded his prisoners into the adjoining room, Hitler told them, “No one leaves this room alive without my permission.” He then informed them they would all have key jobs either in the Bavarian government or in the Reich government which he was forming with Ludendorff. With Ludendorff? Earlier in the evening Hitler had dispatched “Scheubner-Richter to Lud-wigshoehe to fetch the renowned General, who knew nothing of the Nazi conspiracy, to the beerhouse at once.
The three prisoners at first refused even to speak to Hitler. He continued to harangue them. Each of them must join him in proclaiming the revolution and the new governments; each must take the post he, Hitler, assigned them, or “he has no right to exist.” Kahr was to be the Regent of Bavaria; Lossow, Minister of the National Army; Seisser, Minister of the Reich Police. None of the three was impressed at the prospect of such high office. They did not answer.
Their continued silence unnerved Hitler. Finally he waved his gun at them. “I have four shots in my pistol! Three for my collaborators, if they abandon me. The last bullet for myself!” Pointing the weapon to his forehead, he cried, “If I am not victorious by tomorrow afternoon, I shall be a dead man!”
(...) Not one of the three men who held the power of the Bavarian state in their hands agreed to join him, even at pistol point. The putsch wasn’t going according to plan. Then Hitler acted on a sudden impulse. Without a further word, he dashed back into the hall, mounted the tribune, faced the sullen crowd and announced that the members of the triumvirate in the next room had joined him in forming a new national government.
“The Bavarian Ministry,” he shouted, “is removed…. The government of the November criminals and the Reich President are declared to be removed. A new national government will be named this very day here in Munich.
Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Hitler had told a masterful lie, and it worked. When the gathering heard that Kahr, General von Lossow and Police Chief von Seisser had joined Hitler its mood abruptly changed. There were loud cheers, and the sound of them impressed the three men still locked up in the little side room.
(...) He led the others back to the platform, where each made a brief speech and swore loyalty to each other and to the new regime. The crowd leaped on chairs and tables in a delirium of enthusiasm. Hitler beamed with joy.
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William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)
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Nowadays myths can be practically momentary: transmitted throughout the world by 24-hour news and the internet, they spread virally, entering the minds of tens and hundreds of millions of people in minutes or hours. Are these true myths, or mass-manufactured fantasies? At times they can be both. In recent years images of resistance to tyranny have been relayed around the world by mass media, many of them captured on mobile phones by the resisters themselves. The myths of revolution that moved the resisters were reinforced, for a time, by the media that make the news. But myths survive for only as long as they are enacted by those who accept them. As popular uprisings go through their normal sequence of rebellion, anarchy and renewed tyranny, the myth of revolution dissipates to be replaced by new myths of conspiracy and betrayal. Myths
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John Gray (The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths)
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And we can’t all just get along. Rather, we have to become the kinds of persons who can get along. As a major part of this, our epidermal responses have to be changed in such a way that the fire and the fight doesn’t start almost immediately when we are “rubbed the wrong way.” Solitude and silence give us a place to begin the necessary changes, though they are not a place to stop.
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Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
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The Congress is full of highly educated talkers who use ornate, flowery language. Washington never went to college. He speaks simply or, more often, he listens. As the other delegates compete to talk as much as possible, Washington exerts a gravity and power by withholding opinions. He has, as John Adams later puts it, the “gift of silence.” But when he does speak, the words have conviction.
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Brad Meltzer (The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington)
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Whiteness is a conspiracy of both silence and violence.
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Baynard Woods (Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness)
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Unfortunately, it just so happened that the city-wide camera system, controlled by the police, was down that night from 12:20 AM until 12:35 AM. Seriously? Isn’t that convenient… Even more convenient that at the exact same times, there was a complete radio silence on the emergency channels.
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Frank White (The Illuminati's Greatest Hits: Deception, Conspiracies, Murders And Assassinations By The World's Most Powerful Secret Society)
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Middle-aged men of privilege could be seen on corner couches in the embrace of somebody not their wife. Steve usually had a photographer circulating, given free access by his boss to take pictures of the most intimate situations. The photos proved very useful and helped to ensure that those in the know would not turn on their political master—a conspiracy of silence that proved remarkably successful
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Timothy Egan (A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them)
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Last, it is clear that color blindness may be seen as part of a strategy to internally combat recognition of implicitly held biases.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Power-evasion has several consequences: (a) It denies the racialized experiences of people of color (that they are disadvantaged), (b) it denies the existence of privilege enjoyed by Whites (that they are advantaged), (c) it perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, (d) it masks or makes invisible structural inequities in our society, (e) it sustains the social hierarchy by providing a cover of innocence, and (f) it justifies inaction in tackling racial inequities brought about through power and privilege (APA Presidential Task Force, 2012; J. M. Jones, 1997; Neville et al., 2013; Ponterotto, Utsey, & Pedersen, 2006; Sue, 2003).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Second, there is something insidiously pathological about the melting pot concept in its assumption that groups should assimilate. Wehrly states, “Cultural assimilation, as practiced in the United States, is the expectation by the people in power that all immigrants and people outside the dominant group will give up their ethnic and cultural values and will adopt the values and norms of the dominant society—the White, male Euro-Americans” (1995, p. 5). Many psychologists of color, however, have referred to this process as cultural genocide, an outcome of colonial thought (Guthrie, 1997; Thomas & Sillen, 1972).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Let us, for the moment, assume that assimilation is desirable and that becoming a part of your country of residence is important. The question is this: Shouldn't we, therefore, all become Native Americans? Further, why aren't we?
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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one of the greatest barriers to race talk for many White Americans: the invisibility of their Whiteness (Bell, 2003; Helms, 1992; Spanierman, Poteat, Beer, & Armstrong, 2006; Tatum, 1992; Todd & Abrams, 2011).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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The irrational sense of entitlement is a dominant feature of White privilege (McIntosh, 2002).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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the claim that Whites should not be blamed for the past injustices of their ancestors misses a vital point. They still benefit from the past injustices of their forebears!
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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If you accept the concept of White privilege, then you must entertain the more realistic notion that many Whites did not succeed because of superior ability, but due to favoritism.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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the potential White ally must find others who will walk with him or her, encourage him or her to continue the journey, and form new friendships and partnerships, especially among people of color. Studies suggest that antiracist people have greater racial diversity among friends, support affirmative action, possess greater cultural sensitivity and empathy, and are more prone to take social action to rectify injustices (Spanierman et al., 2009).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Many Black students report that to convey their message and have it received the right way, they cannot be emotional while speaking. Squelching their natural style of communication to conform to White talk was often described as humiliating. They described the psychological costs as being inauthentic, having sold out, not being true to the self, and a deep sense of losing one's own integrity.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Racial dialogues are microcosms of race relations in the United States; reenact the biases, prejudices, and stereotypes of the wider society; invalidate and punish dissenting voices; and force compliance on groups of color.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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If indeed, he or she has unwittingly engaged in racist behaviors and has unknowingly allowed systems of injustice to flourish, the pain and suffering inflicted upon people of color is partly due to his or her own complicity in a racist system. This proves to be a frightening and uncomfortable realization for many White Americans. Blinders of naïveté, innocence, and obliviousness become removed when awareness of racism and its dynamics increases.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. John F. Kennedy, Waldorf Astoria, April 1961
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Mark Goodwin (Conspiracy (The Days of Noah, #1))
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If there is anything that can be termed White culture, it is the synthesis of ideas, values, and beliefs coalesced from descendants of White European ethnic groups in the United States (Barongan et al., 1997).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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if Whiteness, as unearned privilege and advantage, is predicated on White supremacy and the oppression of people of color and if Whites benefit from it, then a frightening conclusion must be drawn: Whites have a stake in racism and to be White is to benefit from racism (Wise, 2002). Little wonder then that race talk is threatening and that many Whites avoid it in order not to reach this conclusion.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Becoming nonracist means soul searching, individual change, and working on the self; becoming antiracist means taking personal action to end external racism that exists systemically and in the action of others.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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experimenters concluded that people tend to mispredict their affective and behavioral responses to racism. They actually seem to respond with indifference. The investigators suggested that despite public condemnation of racism and increasing awareness of its negative impact on people of color, well-intentioned Whites are disinclined to enforce egalitarian norms because of the cognitive and emotional toll required to do so.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Becoming antiracist, therefore, may mean significant changes in how Whites live their lives and may alter their relationships with family, friends, and coworkers as well as affect the environments in which they live (neighborhoods, communities, schools, and worksites).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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most people, including Whites, perceive racial relationships as binary: Black–White only (Pew Research Center, 2012). So, when matters of prejudice or discrimination are brought up for discussion, other groups of color, such as Asian Americans, Latina/o Americans, and Native Americans, often feel left out of the dialogue and rendered invisible (B. S. K. Kim, 2011; Takaki, 1998).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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To understand the dilemma faced by people of color in race talk we must first become aware of (a) the situational context of oppression that they live under, (b) the ensuing psychological costs associated with racism, and (c) the negative personal and group consequences for breaking their silence.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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In a racial dialogue, communication style differences may not only portray the behaviors of socially marginalized groups as inferior and undesirable, but may trigger stereotypes from Whites of the angry, hostile, and violent Black man or woman. Likewise the reticent, subtle, and quiet communication style of Asian Americans may be seen by Whites as being passive, inhibited, unfeeling, and guarded. Among traditional Asian culture, however, indirectness and subtlety in expressing oneself are seen as signs of maturity, wisdom, and appropriateness.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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All of us are touched by the organizations that employ us and/or in which we are required to seek their goods and services. It goes without saying that such organizations are generally monocultural in nature (White Euro-American) that demand compliance (in the form of culture-bound rules and regulations) on the part of individuals who come in contact with them. Although most of us readily acknowledge the existence of individual racism, the biases of institutional racism are difficult to recognize because they are hidden within the fabric of the policies and practices of the organization (J. M. Jones, 1997).
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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Institutional racism is any institutional policy, practice, or structure in governments, businesses, unions, schools, places of worship, courts, and law enforcement agencies that unfairly subordinate persons of color while allowing Whites to profit from such actions.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
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The inability to see how the assumptions and biased practices exist in one's own beliefs and behaviors allows Whites to operate in a vacuum of naïveté and innocence that distances them from responsibility or the knowledge that their unawareness fosters complicity in the inequities of our society.
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Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)