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