Highlights

  • But within my first few weeks of working there, the organization’s stereotypes, biases, or prejudices begin to emerge. Comments about my hair. Accolades for being “surprisingly articulate” or “particularly entertaining.” Requests to “be more Black” in my speech. Questions about single moms, the hood, “black-on-black crime,” and other hot topics I am supposed to know all about because I’m Black. (Location 121)
  • I am not interested in getting anyone in trouble; I am trying to clarify what it’s like to exist in a Black body in an organization that doesn’t understand it is not only Christian but also white. (Location 136)
  • White people who expect me to be white have not yet realized that their cultural way of being is not in fact the result of goodness, rightness, or God’s blessing. Pushing back, resisting the lie, is hella work. (Location 140)
  • It’s work to be the only person of color in an organization, bearing the weight of all your white co-workers’ questions about Blackness. It’s work to always be hypervisible because of your skin—easily identified as being present or absent—but for your needs to be completely invisible to those around you. It’s work to do the emotional labor of pointing out problematic racist thinking, policies, actions, and statements while desperately trying to avoid bitterness and cynicism. It’s work to stay open to an organization to learn new skills without drinking in the cultural expectations of body size, personality, interests, and talents most valued according to whiteness. (Location 142)
  • Togetherness across racial lines doesn’t have to mean the uplifting of whiteness and harming of Blackness. (Location 150)
  • The ideology that whiteness is supreme, better, best, permeates the air we breathe—in our schools, in our offices, and in our country’s common life. White supremacy is a tradition that must be named and a religion that must be renounced. When this work has not been done, those who live in whiteness become oppressive, whether intentional or not. (Location 162)
  • I offer this story in hopes that we will embody a community eager to name whiteness, celebrate Blackness, and, in a world still governed by systems of racial oppression, begin to see that there’s another way. (Location 170)
  • I knew all about the world of my white teachers and peers, but they didn’t seem to know a thing about mine. (Location 186)
  • Like many Black students in predominately white schools, if I wanted to see myself reflected in the curriculum, I had to act on my own behalf. (Location 361)
  • I was surprised by own reaction. It felt deeply gratifying to have my own experience named, lifted up, discussed, considered worthy of everyone’s attention. And yet, I had no desire to be the Black spokesperson. It felt too risky. I wasn’t sure that my classmates had earned the right to know, to understand, to be given access to such a vulnerable place in my experience. For me, this was more than an educational exercise. This is how we survive. (Location 389)
  • In every previous classroom, I had been responsible for decoding teachers’ references to white middle-class experiences. It’s like when you’re sailing…or You know how when you’re skiing, you have to…My white teachers had an unspoken commitment to the belief that we are all the same, a default setting that masked for them how often white culture bled into the curriculum. For example, when teachers wanted to drive home the point that we should do something daily, they often likened it to how you wash your hair every morning. (Location 436)
  • “I don’t know what to do with what I’ve learned,” she said. “I can’t fix your pain, and I can’t take it away, but I can see it. And I can work for the rest of my life to make sure your children don’t have to experience the pain of racism.” And then she said nine words that I’ve never forgotten: “Doing nothing is no longer an option for me.” (Location 486)
  • the organization wanted our racial diversity without our diversity of thought and culture. (Location 579)
  • Whiteness wants enough Blackness to affirm the goodness of whiteness, the progressiveness of whiteness, the openheartedness of whiteness. Whiteness likes a trickle of Blackness, but only that which can be controlled. (Location 595)
  • The message: I am here to educate my white co-workers when they are confused about a racial issue in their lives. (Location 625)
  • The message: I need white approval and interpretation before my idea will be considered good. (Location 647)
  • In my experience, white people who believe they are safe often prove dangerous when that identity is challenged. (Location 868)
  • This is in part because most white people still believe that they are good and the true racists are easy to spot. The true racists wouldn’t have hired me, wouldn’t have brought me on this trip, wouldn’t have noticed the homogenous environment. My colleagues were much too nice to be racists. (Location 869)
  • When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework—besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people—is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to the racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them. (Location 872)
  • White people really want this to be what reconciliation means: a Black person forgiving them for one racist sin. But just as I cannot make myself responsible for the transformation of white people, neither can I offer relief for their souls. (Location 955)
  • Ultimately, the reason we have not yet told the truth about this history of Black and white America is that telling an ordered history of this nation would mean finally naming America’s commitment to violent, abusive, exploitative, immoral white supremacy, which seeks the absolute control of Black bodies. It would mean doing something about it. (Location 1016)
  • Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. (Location 1027)
  • It is rage inducing to be told that we can do anything we put our minds to, when we work at companies and ministries where no one above middle management looks like us. (Location 1047)
  • I’ve met a number of white people who adamantly resist thinking of themselves as a community, but I cannot imagine resisting my identity as a member of the Black community. I feel kinship and responsibility, pride, belonging, and connection with people simply because of a shared racial and cultural background. (Location 1063)
  • The boldness I possessed in school melted away in the face of supervisors, performance reviews, benefits packages, and the backlash that came from expecting more out of my Church. (Location 1081)
  • Perfection is demanded of Blackness before mercy or grace or justice can even be considered. I refuse to live this way. (Location 1294)
  • But as I stared at my screen in horror and sadness, watching Black residents being treated like enemies of the state, it seemed to me that racism hadn’t evolved at all. Instead of confronting Black residents on horseback with nightsticks, police now showed up in tanks with automatic rifles strapped to their backs. (Location 1321)
  • For all their talk about being persecuted, white Christian Americans don’t know this kind of terror. Generations of Black Americans have known nothing but this kind of terror. (Location 1380)
  • we have allowed reconciliation to become synonymous with contentedly hanging out together. (Location 1464)
  • Too often, our discussions of race are emotional but not strategic, our outreach work remains paternalistic, and our ethnic celebrations fetishize people of color. Many champions of racial justice in the Church have stopped using the term altogether, because it has been so watered down from its original potency. (Location 1467)
  • Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they’ve done something heroic when the real work is yet to come. (Location 1498)
  • These folks want a pat on the back simply for arriving at the conclusion that having people of color around is good. But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless. It’s not enough to dabble at diversity and inclusion while leaving the existing authority structure in place. Reconciliation demands more. (Location 1508)
  • Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t need all white people to get onboard before justice and reconciliation can be achieved. (Location 1524)
  • The march toward change has been grueling, but it is real. And all it has ever taken was the transformed—the people of color confronting past and present to imagine a new future, and the handful of white people willing to release indifference and join the struggle. (Location 1531)
  • need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice. (Location 1546)
  • Between the World and Me, (Location 1552)
  • Slavery in this country was 250 years. What that means is that there were African Americans who were born in this country in 1750/1760 and if they looked backwards their parents were slaves. Their grandparents were slaves. Their great grandparents were slaves. If they looked forward, their children would be slaves. Their grandchildren would be slaves. And possibly, their great grandchildren will be slaves. There was no real hope within their individual life span of ending enslavement—the most brutal form of degradation in this country’s history. There was nothing in their life that said, “This will end in my lifetime. I will see the end of this.” And they struggled. And they resisted. (Location 1583)