Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man Quotes

White privilege is about the word white, not rich. It's having advantage built into your life. It's not saying your life hasn't been hard; it's saying your skin color hasn't contributed to the difficulty in your life.

The beautiful thing about the piano is that you got white keys and you got black keys. And the only way to make the most beautiful, magnificent, and poetic noise is with both sets of keys working in tandem. You can’t just play all white keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. You can’t just play all black keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. But integrate the white and black keys together, and that is when the piano makes a joyful noise.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has biases. It’s the job of empathetic and considerate people not to let them dictate actions that harm others.

Know that when you say you are an ally, you are saying that you are willing to risk your white privilege in the name of justice and equality for marginalized voices.

There’s no White History Month because we celebrate the accomplishments of white people Every. Single. Day. White people have always been esteemed in this country, have always been celebrated. Black people have had to push to celebrate themselves and their culture in public.

To clarify: defunding the police doesn’t mean abolishing the police, though there are more radical calls for that, too. It instead means redirecting money from police budgets to other government agencies funded by the city. Defunding the police could mean more money for underfunded schools, for mental health programs, or for drug recovery programs, all of which can help to reduce crime.

Nobody comes to a game to see the players huddle. They come to see the players execute the plays that are called in the huddle.

The lesson there is that being an ally means showing up.

What I’m saying is that a white person’s skin color isn’t the thing contributing to holding them back, and that for all black people, their skin color contributes to what’s hard about their lives no matter what other privileges they might enjoy.

Vote, vote, vote, vote like your life depends on it. Like our lives depend on it. They do.

Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs. —TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM

Do good work, but don’t make the mistake of caring more about your intentions than about the impact of your intentions, or seeking out gratitude or praise. Make sure you aren’t engaged in optical allyship—the kind that goes only so far as it takes to get the right post for social media. True allyship is a commitment to fight this fight for the long haul: long after it ceases to be a top-of-the-fold news item, long after the cameras have stopped capturing it. Not today, but tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade.

The New York Times estimates that between fifteen and twenty-six million people demonstrated over George Floyd’s death in the United States alone, making it the largest demonstration in the history of the country. Some researchers number the protestors at twenty-four million worldwide, which would make it the largest mass protest in history, period.

Let’s think about what this means: race was a political creation, an economic creation—all this hate developed to secure the interest of some seventeenth-century dudes who wanted to get rich growing sugarcane and cotton, who wanted to make sure they’d always be the class on top. Which is to say, racism has always been about power. Which is to say, we invented racism. Which is to say, maybe we can learn to uninvent it, too.

True allyship demands that it move from conversation to action. And that action will include risks. This isn’t the 1830s or the 1930s, 1950s, or 1968, but I won’t lie to you and say it’ll be easy. The risks might be something as small as a distant social media friend unfriending you. But it could be something more severe, like ostracism from an intimate friend group, job insecurity, public or private ridicule, friction with loved ones.

Cultural appropriation happens when members of a dominant group—in the United States, white people—take elements from the culture of a people who are disempowered. It’s problematic for a number of reasons. For one, it trivializes historic oppression. It also lets people show love for a culture while still remaining prejudiced toward the people of the culture and lets privileged people profit from the labor of oppressed people. On top of that, it can perpetuate racist stereotypes.

Our democracy is supposed to be fair and impartial, but the truth is that both Republicans and Democrats engage the Fix to some degree.

The simple version is that an ally is a person from an empowered group who acts to help an oppressed group, even if it costs them the benefits of their power.

You can’t shackle and chain someone for hundreds of years, liberate them to compete freely with the rest and still justly believe that you’ve been fair.

The ultimate logic of racism,” Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “is genocide.

A country in which the simple declaration that people who look like me are worth saving has become controversial.

It’s not white people’s job to police the feelings of black people, but as fellow human beings, please grant black people the right to the full gamut of emotions regarding their wounds.

The bottom line: our criminal justice system too often treats black people like thugs instead of like people. So the cycle perpetuates, and both stereotypes and actual violence keep going and going and going.

I want to leave you with this: if you see a black man and he is angry, obviously don’t assume he’s angry because he’s black, but also don’t assume he’s even angry at anything racism-related in that moment. Let people have emotions. See him as an individual

Black people care about being murdered. In addition to its murky genesis, black-on-black crime is a misleading term without context. The most important bit of context: that the majority of violent crimes against white people are perpetrated by white people.

don’t forget about local elections. State legislatures have a huge influence on what you can and can’t do where you live; the mayor approves the city budget on things like police or school funding; your local district attorney has say over who goes to prison and who doesn’t. Local elections can even get your potholes filled, and I think we’re all anti-potholes. So do your research on the candidates just as you would for a president. Attend their speeches and debates when you can, call them out on issues of fairness and bias. Make them accountable to their records in a public forum.

For similar reasons, it’s at best insensitive to say “All lives matter” when someone says that black lives matter. White lives have never been in danger from black lives to the degree that black lives have been endangered by white people and whiteness, and that’s on an individual level and a systemic level.

According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, people living in households with income below the federal poverty line are twice as likely to commit violent crime than high-income households, regardless of race. We’ve been doing it wrong. The best tough-on-crime bill is a tough—the toughest—on-poverty bill.

Imagine the worst insult you’ve ever received. Now imagine that when you heard those words, what you also heard was that you’re second-class forever. That you don’t deserve any of this American dream. Imagine what you heard was: You’re an animal. Imagine you heard, You’re stupid. You’re a slave. My people owned your people, and you were better off when they did. Imagine that you heard, You won’t amount to anything, boy. And the nothing you get is exactly what you deserve. If you can picture one word communicating all of that, then you’ll have some sense of what hearing the N-word does to me and any other black person in America.

For almost a century, black people were not allowed to legally vote, even as their bodies (three-fifths each) were used to beef up the Southern vote. Then they get the legal right to vote, only to face all kinds of nefarious tactics to keep them from it. They then face a justice system not of their peers but white people (in 2017, 71 percent of U.S. district court judges were white), who send them to prison far more often than white people. Once freed, they face yet more obstacles to vote. Should they somehow vote by accident, they face more prison—and should they not vote, well, they have little means of changing the laws and those who make them. A lose-lose situation, whichever way you look at it. That, brothers and sisters, is the nature of the Fix.

systemic racism is the legitimizing of every dynamic—historic, cultural, political, economic, institutional, and person-to-person—that gives advantages to white people, while at the same time producing a whole host of terrible effects for black people and other people of color. Those effects show up as inequalities in power, opportunities, laws, and every other metric of how individuals and groups are treated. Which is to say: systemic racism is making the unequal treatment of people of color the national norm.

In the time of slavery, black women were often sexually exploited by white men. (Read up on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.) Now, imagine you were a black man and the woman you’d claimed as your wife (legal marriages between slaves weren’t allowed) was raped by your white master or overseer. Not only was she raped but she was impregnated and gave birth to the master’s child, and there was nothing you could do about it. Try to imagine the kind of hurt and anger you’d feel if this happened to you once, twice; if it happened to your children; if you suspected it had and would go on for generations. On the other hand, imagine that if you so much as looked sideways at a white woman, if you did nothing but were accused of violating her respect and/or chastity, you could be captured, beaten, and lynched by a posse of white men. And when it was all over, that there would be nothing your people could do lest they suffer the same fate as you. And no consequences for the white people who murdered you. If that were your reality, if that were the history of your forebears, how angry would you be?

You ever read about the first black person to do so and so or hold such and such a job? I know I have. Here’s the first black head football coach in the NFL. Here’s the first black owner in the NFL. Here’s the first black editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Here’s the first black person to attend Harvard, the first black valedictorian at Princeton. Here’s the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. Now think of when you’ve ever heard about the first white person to do something significant. I can’t remember one time reading, “Check it out, finally a white person’s done this!” And you know why? Because white people have had a lock on significance since before this country was even a country.

remember

As always, try to reflect critically on how you use language and the extent to which your language reflects your innermost thoughts and feelings. If you can’t help yourself, I suggest you stop rapping along to the music.

No, it’s not reverse racism to celebrate Black History Month. But it might be racist to call for a White History Month.

When people proclaim that black lives matter, it’s not about saying white lives don’t matter. It is a given in this country that they do. What black people are really and truly saying is that black lives matter as well as white lives.

Also, here’s a language-born mindset change: instead of thinking of it as criminal justice, think of it as justice. We get into sticky territory with the word criminal. Not that criminals don’t exist, but who gets called a criminal and why is not so cut-and-dried and usually has something to do with race and class or both.

Before I go any further, a few words on the worst of all arguments: that this is just how black families are. As if black people are genetically disposed to this brokenness. If broken families were in the nature of black people, how do we explain all those efforts in the wake of war? How to explain why black people didn’t have broken families when they were back in Africa? As an African and first-generation American, I can confidently say that in Nigeria, family ties are every bit as strong, if not stronger, than they are here. If this book has emphasized anything, it’s that history has a huge part to play on what kind of America we live in now. What we see of the black family is the legacy of America’s first black families. So if the brokenness isn’t inherent, why has that legacy persisted for so long?

But here’s a one-in-four statistic that’s way less appealing: about one in four black Americans will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their life. Researchers say black people that experience chronic racism can develop something called racial battle fatigue, a state that includes, among other symptoms, anxiety, worry, hypervigilance, headaches, and increased heart rate and blood pressure.

It’s tougher to keep a family together when you’re fighting for your mental health, if not your life.

Tell your friends when you like something. As more of these projects become profitable, more of them will exist in the world. The more that exist, the greater likelihood of nuanced depictions of black people. The more nuanced the depictions, the better to combat harmful stereotypes, the greater the chance of broadening perspectives about black people.

I believe a person should be able to love who they love. I believe that love wins. I believe a family can look however it looks and still be a family.

The beautiful thing about the piano is that you got white keys and you got black keys. And the only way to make the most beautiful, magnificent, and poetic noise is with both sets of keys working in tandem. You can’t just play all white keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. You can’t just play all black keys, because you won’t maximize what the instrument has to offer. But integrate the white and black keys together, and that is when the piano makes a joyful noise. That’s what this “we” is all about. If we can truly integrate white people and black people together, working in tandem, that’s when our world will make its joyful noise.

if you see a black man and he is angry, obviously don’t assume he’s angry because he’s black, but also don’t assume he’s even angry at anything racism-related in that moment. Let people have emotions. See him as an individual.

white privilege is about the word white, not rich. It’s having advantage built into your life. It’s not saying your life hasn’t been hard; it’s saying your skin color hasn’t contributed to the difficulty in your life.

Change your thoughts and change your world.

We’ve been doing it wrong. The best tough-on-crime bill is a tough—the toughest—on-poverty bill.

Also try the Ava DuVernay miniseries When They See Us, about the miscarriage of justice known as the trial of the Central Park Five.

there’s often no difference whatsoever between a riot or a rebellion besides who’s looking at it

health programs, or for drug recovery programs, all of which can help to reduce crime.

Do good work, but don’t make the mistake of caring more about your intentions than about the impact of your intentions, or seeking out gratitude or praise.

I believe an important part of the cure, maybe the most crucial part of it, is to talk to each other.

getting uncomfortable is the whole idea. Everything great is birthed through discomfort.

O, let America be America Again / The land that never has been yet.

I believe the majority of white Americans are now ready to help America become the land it dreamed for itself.

And white privilege is about the word white, not rich. It’s having advantage built into your life. It’s not saying your life hasn’t been hard; it’s saying your skin color hasn’t contributed to the difficulty in your life.

So far, this book has been mostly about the divide between black and white Americans, which is necessary for a book about race and racism. As a reminder, “I don’t see color” is not an okay thing to say, because to say we’re all exactly the same is to gloss over a whole history and presence of inequality.

To clarify: defunding the police doesn’t mean abolishing the police, though there are more radical calls for that, too. It instead means redirecting money from police budgets to other government agencies funded by the city. Defunding the police could mean more money for underfunded schools, for mental health programs, or

We’ve got to think that grand. Finishing the work of protests in America is tantamount to finishing off racism. It’s a big order: the biggest order. Which is why we need all the good people to fight, fight, fight injustice and inequality wherever we find it.

an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.

Black people all know a change needs to come, and are all figuring out how to fight for it.

See him as an individual.

nearly seven of ten black children born into middle-income families failed to maintain that income level as adults.

nine of the first twelve presidents being slave-owning Southerners.

This despite these ACLU stats: up to 25 percent of black citizens of voting age lack government-issued ID, compared to only 8 percent of white people.

According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, people living in households with income below the federal poverty line are twice as likely to commit violent crime than high-income households, regardless of race.

The best tough-on-crime bill is a tough—the toughest—on-poverty bill.