White Privilege Quotes

“Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”

This invisibility is political.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Privilege: A Reader

“You have to get over the fear of facing the worst in yourself. You should instead fear unexamined racism. Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don't know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Our police force was not created to serve black Americans; it was created to police black Americans and serve white Americans.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves.”
― Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

“When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
― Adam Rutherford, How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

“What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up – but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you'd be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys.

Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

“Paul jumped, unable to hide his surprise. Then he grinned and said, "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. For a Chinese woman, your English is extraordinary. There is not a trace of an accent to be found."
"I have an American accent," she replied dully.
Paul waved her off. "You know what I mean."
Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn more than one language, unlike you?”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“Heterosexual choice is allowed to be the background of a writer’s life; its wallpaper. So is maleness. And whiteness. Step out of that and you will be called a feminist writer, a lesbian writer, a gay writer, a woman writer. A black writer. You will never be called a heterosexual writer or a male writer or a white writer. Those signifiers are absorbed into the single word ‘writer’.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Love

“Sociologically speaking, American democracy is the perfect specimen of a dysfunctional democracy. When a supremacist president incites racist hate and terrorist violence, out of bigotry and boneheadedness, his stoneage supporters consider it a matter of pride, but when an egalitarian president so much as mispronounces a few words due to his medical stammer, he is deemed incompetent by those people. Which only goes to show, no matter how much a nation tries to right the wrongs of its inhuman origin, there will always be some people who'd consider those inhumanities as their proud heritage, and would go to any length to maintain those customs and beliefs as such. And this is not an American phenomenon, it's a worldwide phenomenon - and everywhere it manifests under the same banner of tradition, heritage and nationalism.

That is why I say to you - until we oust every last trace of nationalism from every corner of this world, we shall never in a million years have a genuinely integrated and upward-moving society. Either nationalism or humanity, you cannot have both - either borders or peace, you cannot have both - either guns or children, you cannot have both - either heritage or history, you cannot have both.

If history comes as a blow to your heritage, then by all means, live in your bubble - but do so as a prehistoric ape disconnected from the civilizing world. You cannot call yourself a civilized human and at the same time refuse to acknowledge human suffering. Your uncivilization may be your prerogative, but before you turn that uncivilization into the norm, you shall find a hundred MLKs, Baldwins, Mayas and Naskars standing as obstacle to your insanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“[I]f we objected to any blanket statements that would portray Black people in a certain way, or statements that insinuate that any Muslim is potentially violent or a terrorist, or that queer people are pedophiles, why aren’t we using the same basic critical tool to reject the assumption that being white necessarily makes one privileged or racist? Why are we not using another basic critical tool by asking yet another important question: what percentage of white people is extremely wealthy and privileged, and how/why it is problematic to put all whites in one basket as it would be if we do to any other group of people? Anyone who has traveled through the poor parts of white America, places like West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and many others that I have personally visited and observed, will know that there is a big percentage of white people who are, in some cases, as poor as newly arrived undocumented immigrants.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“Bluestone said, "Hihanni waste."
"He honnay washtay?" Sam gave him a bewildered half smile. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Exactly my point," Bluestone said. "I've lived in a white man's world all my life, But you have never lived in mine....It's a greeting....”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“There are bigger villains than Adolf, but they are not deemed villain so long as they do white man no harm.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“World Poachers (Sonnet 1502)

The western alliance didn't fight Hitler
because he tortured the Jewish people,
they fought him because he was't gonna
show anyone any special consideration.

Jews were never the focus of World War 2,
It was about the invaders being invaded.
Lo and behold, Nazis are the villain,
though England, Belgium, France, Spain
and Portugal caused far worse damage!

If you feel one way about Hitler,
and another way about Churchill,
your opinion is of no consequence,
living on a whitewashed dunghill.

Rushmore is a monument of massacre,
Buckingham is a palace of plunderers.
Till you denounce all atrocious heritage,
You're just animal heir to world poachers.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“[T]he most important thing we need to remember about white people is that they are people! And like any people, they have the virtues and vices of any human being on this planet. But also, like any people, when they exist in certain circumstances, live under certain structures or systems, or are influenced and agitated by malicious media narratives, they behave like any other humans would if in their place.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“Compulsory confessions of privilege evoke parallels with religious confessions of sin.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“Why did nobody else say anything?”
― Natalie Evans, Being an Ally

“White Fragility Sonnet
(A Record of White Crimes Against Humanity)

Whiteness has done more harm to the world than good,
Till you look past your whiteness, you cannot be human.
Orange 'n musky trash of white privilege diss diversity,
What else would you expect from colonial descendants!

Every generation has its fraudsters like Edison,
Every generation has trashy maniacs like Columbus.
Every generation has war-merchants like Kissinger,
Every generation has its churchillian doofus.

White people tortured the Africans,
White people booted Native Americans;
White people massacred the Vietnamese,
White people lynched and looted the Indians.

White people caused genocide after genocide,
Yet you still boast about white superiority.
You proclaim that people of color are inferior,
While white society is the epitome of savagery.

If devil had a color, it would be white -
Yet I say, color is nonsense, we're all equal.
I am human enough to give you place beside me,
All I expect is that, a human behaves human.

After all the heartaches inflicted by white people,
A 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient.
Yet I am human enough to declare, we are all equal;
All I ask is that, humans finally behave human.

They say, I'm spreading hate against the whites;
To which I say, human making is my mission.
There is no hope for humanitarian uplift,
Unless you renounce all fragile intoleration.

If you wanna learn about tolerance, ask a person of color,
How do you even tolerate the sight of white people, when
the wrongs done to you by whites are unparalleled in history!
You'll realize, there's no mythical secret to integration,
For ages we've known no other life but of inclusivity.

Middle East, India and Far East,
have been the melting pot of integration,
before the whites even knew what integration is.
Yet you say white people are superior - so be it;
Cowards always take refuge in fairytales,
to justify their fragility and prejudice.

If you wanna be a decent human being,
Never draw moral parameters from the west.
No matter whether you're born of east or west,
Remember, you are human first, then all else.

To recognize diversity is science,
To celebrate diversity is humanity.
To recognize privilege is common sense,
To abandon privilege builds human society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“Till you look past your whiteness, you cannot be human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“White people caused genocide after genocide,
Yet you still boast about white superiority.
You proclaim that people of color are inferior,
While white society is the epitome of savagery.
After all the heartaches inflicted by white people,
A 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient.
Yet I am human enough to declare, we are all equal;
All I ask is that, humans finally behave human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“After all the heartaches inflicted by white people, a 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“If history comes as a blow to your heritage, then by all means, live in your bubble - but do so as a prehistoric ape disconnected from the civilizing world. You cannot call yourself a civilized human and at the same time refuse to acknowledge human suffering. Your uncivilization may be your prerogative, but before you turn that uncivilization into the norm, you shall find a hundred MLKs, Baldwins, Mayas and Naskars standing as obstacle to your insanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“The First World War (Sonnet 1501)

There are bigger villains than Adolf,
But they are not deemed villain
so long as they do white man no harm.
Two world wars count for nothing, compared
to the struggles of the rest of the world.

You only hear of two world wars, not more,
Because world history is actually white history.
White welfare has always been default human welfare,
Like today we humans deem animal welfare secondary.

Even the world map as you know is one big lie,
depicting an exaggerated size of the global north.
Rather than arguing over the planethood of Pluto,
How about you right the wrongs right here on earth!

Endeavor as human and reclaim your humanhood,
Work for actual human welfare, defying white denial.
There never was a world war, there was only white war,
The first world war has just begun, against violation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“There are bigger villains than Adolf, but they are not deemed villain so long as they do white man no harm. Two world wars count for nothing, compared to the struggles of the rest of the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“In June 2020 they post a black square and from then on, they post frolicky Black women in the company's cottage core aesthetic and say they acknowledge they have to do better.”
― Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

“This part of the city used to be cool because it wasn't but then it was forced to be a different of cool. A pricey. I think they call that gentrification.”
― Priya Guns, Your Driver Is Waiting

“It’s not about feeling guilty, it’s about feeling human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“By hiding behind the overarching term “white privilege,” the small percentage of privileged whites have ensured the following: first, they remain disguised behind the veil of whiteness and thus maintain the status quo. Second, they ensure that most marginalized white people remain defensive—and come to their defense—whenever their wealth and power are threatened. Third, through the structure of “whiteness,” privileged whites ensure that a large percentage of disadvantaged white people see other groups fighting against similar socio-economic ills as enemies, not allies to unite with in their battle. As such, the first bold proposal I make, if we are serious about social change, is to replace “white privilege” with “privileged whites” to account for the many whites who are not privileged and distinguish them from those who are. The huge number of disadvantaged white people are allies in this battle against the privileged, wealthy ruling class who utilize countless “isms” and “phobias” as sorting devices, while using the term “white privilege” as a tool to prevent any potential allyship between many white people who are not part of their club, yet are misled to think that the problem is everyone else in society except the privileged whites…Precision in language makes a huge difference to ensure all social groups who need to unite and work together have clarity on what kind of changes are needed, and who exactly is blocking change and transformation.
[From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”
― Louis Yako