Quote of the Day

One of the great perks of being white in America is the capacity to forget at will.  The sort of amnesia that blankets white America is reflected in an Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman lyric sung by Barbra Streisand: "What's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget."  The second stage of grief flashes in the assertion "it didn't happen."  Instead of "forget it," there is "deny it."  Civil rights icon Joseph Lowery often says that we live in the fifty-first state, the state of denial.  Denial is even more sinister than amnesia because there is some concession to facts that are then roundly negated.  Here is where the gaslight effect goes wild.  Black folk are made to feel crazy for believing something they know to be true.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 78

Quote of the Day

Loss doesn't have an expiration date.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 134

Quote of the Day

On this continent alone, some of us grew up Christian, some of us Jewish, and some Unitarian.  Some of us were raised Buddhist, some Quaker, or Muslim, Hindu, or Wiccan.  Some of us were even raised Scientologist.  Many of us have been taught that our own mythology is the right, or only, one.  This makes coexistence way tougher than it needs to be.  Mythologies with more power than others to enforce their beliefs bully the world and make it difficult, or nearly impossible, to live differently from their traditions and from their ideas of purity and righteousness.  Ideally, nobody would wanna impose their beliefs on anyone -- we would just try to prevent meanness and preserve everyone's right to pursue happiness.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 49

Quote of the Day

President Donald Trump chose "Make America Great Again" as his 2016 campaign slogan.  It sounded the call to white America to return to simpler, better days.  But the golden age of the past is a fiction, a projection of nostalgia that selects what is most comforting to remember.  It summons a past that was not great for all; in fact, it is a past that was not great at all, not with racism and sexism clouding the culture.  Going back to a time that was great depends on deliberate disremembering.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 77-78

Quote of the Day

Remember how burdensome and unlovable a person in need can feel?  There's nothing like being in a shitty or scary time and hearing from others that they love you.  In person, via text or email, written on a cake, however and how often you can do it, say I love, admire, respect you, or express whatever kind of adoration you actually have for a person.  It can't go wrong.  And it's sorely needed, and deeply appreciated.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 130

Quote of the Day

Some of us have never felt included or welcome in whatever system of belief was bullying us, even the one that we were a part of.  Some of us were forced to seek out mythologies that sang to us from the popular culture in the voices of movie stars or television characters.  We have looked for myths that include us in great novels, music, the latest comic book, or even some stupid advertising campaign.  We'll look anywhere for a mythology that embraces people like ourselves.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 48

Quote of the Day

Slavery made America a slave to black history.  As much as white America invented us, the nation can never be free of us now.  America doesn't even exist without us.  That's why Barack Obama was so offensive, so scary to white America.  America shudders and says to itself: The president's supposed to be us, not them.  In that light, Donald Trump's victory was hardly surprising.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 76

Quote of the Day

Knowing what to say, and when to say it, starts with these two very simple principles of supportive communication:

1. You can't solve the problem.
2. You'll never know how they feel.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 102

Quote of the Day

Two hundred years after the founding of this country, why are those of us who don't fit into some either/or told that our pursuit of happiness doesn't count?  Are we going to continue nit-picking over exactly which happiness is legal and important, and which happiness is illegal and unimportant?  Who has the right to say whose happiness is right?  It all comes down to the mythology we grew up with.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 48

Quote of the Day

Beloved, white racial grief erupts when you fear losing your dominance.  You get mighty angry at our demand that you live up to the sense of responsibility you say others should have -- especially black folk and people of color.  You often tell us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to make no excuses for our failures, and to instead admit our flaws and better ourselves.  And yet so many of you, beloved, are obstinate to a fault, intransigent and thin-skinned when it comes to accepting the calling out you effortlessly offer to others.  Donald Trump is only the most recent and boisterous example.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 73-74

Quote of the Day

When the silence of listening is uncomfortable, it's not because silence is a problem.  It's because you aren't used to it.

-- Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, There Is No Good Card for This, p. 94

Quote of the Day

All the world's great civil rights movements have sought to harmlessly break some cultural bully standard.  And all the outlaws who survived those civil rights movements have learned an important lesson.  We understand that we can be outsiders and be miserable about it, or we can be outsiders and enjoy the fuck out of ourselves until we're old and weird and happy just being our geeky, freaky, outlaw selves.  Understanding that is how we stay alive in a world that doesn't like who or what we are, what we look like, who we love, or how we act.

-- Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World, p. 45