Quote of the Day

When some of you say, "I don't see color," you are either well-intending naifs or willful race evaders.  In either case you don't help the cause.  The failure to see color only benefits white America.  A world without color is a world without racial debt.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 86

Quote of the Day

When you want to reach out to a person going through something that you've also experienced yourself, you can now see why it's a good idea to restrain your normal, but incredibly unhelpful impulse to compare your situations.  If you don't feel prepared to handle someone else's difficulty because of the intense feelings it brings up about your own...explore other ways of being there for your friend that don't involve much talking about it.  And if you want to talk about the feelings that are coming up for you as a result of a friend's difficult time, talk to others about what's going on -- not your suffering friend.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 198

Quote of the Day

I think, instead, we should try something like this: "Excuse me...I hope I'm not interrupting," and only when we've determined that we're truly not interrupting someone or intruding on their privacy, do we proceed to ask, "I find you fascinating and so different from me.  Might I ask you what your life's been like?  I think we could learn something from each other."  How about that for putting aside childish ways that no longer work in the lives of kind, generous, inclusive adults?  Isn't that easy?

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 56-57

Quote of the Day

The appropriation of "minority" cultures by white writers with a political advantage leaves people of color little room to speak their truths in their own ways.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 84

Quote of the Day

Unless you actually are an expert, whose expertise is being asked for, hearing news of someone's crisis is not the time to offer up casual theories about their misfortune.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 197

Quote of the Day

I think it's time for all of us to put away the childish things that don't work in the lives of kind, generous adults.  I think we need to find alternatives to saying, or even thinking, childish things like, "Hey Faggot, Hey Cunt, Hey Nigger..."  I think we need to find alternatives to saying, or even just thinking, childish things like, "You're too fat to be on our side," or too ugly, or too poor, or too Arab...I think we need to find alternatives to saying, or even just thinking, childish things like, "You're either with us, or you're against us..."

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 56

Quote of the Day

When it comes to race the past is always present.  What Jim Crow achieved in the past through, say, redlining -- where services like banking, insurance, health care, and supermarkets are denied to specific racial or ethnic groups -- continues to this day.  Formal segregation in housing policies may have been struck down, but steering, where real estate brokers direct home buyers toward or away from particular neighborhoods based on race, is as effective as ever.  School segregation is no longer the law of the land, but classrooms today are depressingly re-segregated.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 79-80

Quote of the Day

When it comes to being supportive, being smart matters way less than being kind (and well mannered).

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 197

Quote of the Day

As kids, most of us didn't kill the class freaks.  But, we developed something equally effective: We knew how to make the class freaks want to kill themselves.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 52

Quote of the Day

A great deal of white advantage has nothing to do with how you actively resist black success, or the success of other people of color.  It's what you do for each other, how you take each other into account, that makes up a lot of what we have come to call "white privilege."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 79

Quote of the Day

When we're trying to relate to someone in their difficult time, our most common instinct is to compare it to our own situation ... when doing so, it may seem altruistic to help someone not feel alone.  But in fact, comments such as "I know how you feel" or "That's so much like what happened to me" can close off opportunities to learn what the person in crisis is feeling.  As one divorced person said: "My mother believed that my divorce would be just like hers.  She didn't want to, or couldn't, see that my divorce was different, that I am different!"  As someone who lost both parents said: "In general, I'm surprised by how folks are quick to start telling their own story but not really care about yours."

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 190-191

Quote of the Day

By leaving no options for an outsider in the world, a bully culture engineers its own destruction.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 51