White Fragility: Why it's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo

"Because I haven't been socialized to see myself or to be seen by other whites in racial terms, I don't carry the psychic weight of race; I don't have to worry about how others feel about my race. Nor do I worry that my race will be held against me." p. 54 "As a culture, we don't claim that gender roles and gender conditioning disappear the moment we love someone of the "opposite" gender...We understand that gender is a very deep social construct, that we have different experiences depending on our gender roles, assignments, and expressions, and that we will wrestle with these differences throughout the life of our relationship. Yet when the topic is race, we claim that it is completely inoperative if there is any level of fond regard." p. 80 "A parent training a child not to say certain things that are overtly racist is teaching the child self-censorship rather than how to examine the deeply embedded racial messages we all absorb. Ideally, we would teach our children how to recognize and challenge prejudice, rather than deny it." p. 84 If a white co-worker talks over a person of color: "I try to explain how the impact is different when we interrupt across race because we bring our histories with us." p. 107 The author argues that we need to stop seeing racist=bad and not-racist=good, but instead recognize that we are all deeply socialized into a racist system, and instead of becoming defensive if someone ever points out something we've done that is racially problematic, to be able to admit that we all have biases and prejudices and that we can all work on being more understanding of where others are coming from and how we interact with those around us.