Quote of the Day

Working as a white ally is tough, but certainly not impossible.  Learning to listen is a virtue that whiteness has often avoided.  I asked (a would-be white ally) to engage, to adopt the vocabulary of empathy, to develop fluidity in the dialect of hope and the language of racial understanding.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 70

Quote of the Day

If we are to fully give, we must do so by first giving compassion to ourselves.  Because what someone in crisis really needs is not your skilled perfection, but you.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 85

Quote of the Day

Our imaginations are in thrall to the institutions of oppression.

-- Minnie Bruce Pratt

Quote of the Day

To be black in America means always taking in views we disagree with, not out of altruism, but out of necessity and the impulse to survive.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 69

Quote of the Day

Compassion for others isn't fully possible if we don't also have compassion for ourselves.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 84

Quote of the Day

Bullies can make life miserable.  And I'm not just talking about kids, because bullies don't stop being bullies once they've grown up, they just get more sophisticated ... most systems we've developed as a culture to classify ourselves -- systems like sexuality, gender, race, class, and age -- are not typically questioned all that much.  Those in political power these days actively discourage questions that challenge their bully culture.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 33

Quote of the Day

There is a paradox that many of you refuse to see: to get to a point where race won't make a difference, we have to wrestle, first, with the difference that race makes.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 67

Quote of the Day

When you recognize that bad things happen to good people, and also, that bad things actually happen to you -- it creates a connection around suffering that is a two-way relationship between equals.  Compassion is not a relationship built on a notion of one always-messed-up person matched with one always-saving-the-world person.  It is built upon each of us being messed up in many points of our lives.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 65

Quote of the Day

This book is a lot about learning how to give yourself permission to go on living even when it really hurts.  Right now you might be glad I've given you permission.  Eventually, you'll no longer need anyone's but your own.  Permission to do what?  Permission to take yet another stab at putting together the kind of identity that makes you feel that you're being true to yourself and that life is worth living.  Go ahead, give yourself permission to become the kind of person you've always dreamed you could be.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 32

Quote of the Day

O. J. [Simpson] awakened your collective white rage.  That or you're obsessed with him because he's the one that got away, the one who challenged your view of whiteness, made you madder than anybody -- that is, until Obama.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 63

Quote of the Day

Acknowledging someone's pain by feeling FOR them, but not actually feeling WITH them, is the opposite of supportive compassion.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 64

Quote of the Day

I can tell you this with certainty: You are worthy and capable of finding a way to live your life just the way you really are.  And there are plenty of good people in the world who believe that a life like yours needs to be lived.  If you work at being as fully you as you can possibly be, you will feel better.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 32

Quote of the Day

And even though the egregious errors of the criminal justice system existed long before [O. J.] Simpson, the constant refusal ever since to even charge most white police in the killing of unarmed black motorists is a kind of collective payback for O. J.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 63

Quote of the Day

At its core, compassion is the acceptance of suffering.  That does not mean full detachment, in which you don't give a damn, like "hey, stuff happens, move on."  And it's not an intellectual acceptance of suffering that has you looking at someone's personal tragedy through a cold haze of statistics.  "Well, you know, only one out of five wind up..."  Rather, compassion is the acceptance that awful stuff can happen to any of us.  In fact, that bad things happen to good people all the time.  At the same time, compassion does not mean having a freakout or wincing at somebody's suffering, which feels more like pity than compassion.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 64

Quote of the Day

Standards of cultural identities change depending on generation, degree of multiculturalism, and who's sitting in the White House.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 25

Quote of the Day

The hurts and traumas against black folk had piled so high, the pain had resonated so deeply, and the refusal of whiteness to open its eyes had become so abhorrent that black folk sent a message to white America.  No amount of evidence against [O. J.] Simpson could possibly match the far greater evidence of racial injustice against black folk.  And you can't claim ignorance here, my friends.  If a videotape recording of a black man going down under the withering attack of four white police couldn't convince you of the evil of your system, then nothing could.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 62

Quote of the Day

The way we see it: 1. We don't have the capacity to reach out to every single person in need.  2. But, in reality, we can usually reach out more than we think, and it gets easier with practice.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 62

Quote of the Day

I think the world needs more kind people in it, no matter who or what they are, or do.  The world is healthier because of its outsiders and outlaws and freaks and queers and sinners.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 17

Quote of the Day

I know a lot of you hated (O. J. Simpson's lawyer Johnnie Cochran) because he beat you at your own game.  He sold his vision of history as the one that made the most sense to the group of people, his group of people, on that jury, whose decision, for once, mattered most.  That's usually how whiteness operates in a nutshell.  But this time, for a glancing moment, whiteness got coopted by a devilishly handsome chocolate barrister whose smooth words and hypnotic cadence left the jury and nation spellbound.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 59-60

Quote of the Day

A definition of compassion that we like comes from researchers at the University of Michigan's Compassion Lab: Compassion is to notice, feel, and respond.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 60