As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral.
We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism.
You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.
My mother is an African-American from the South Side of Chicago who married a white guy in 1978. She was hyperaware of racism and made me aware of that.
There is racism all over the United States. Most Southerners I know, we definitely find ourselves defending our heritage.
In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.
The racism I am really interested in stamping out is in everyday life. Joe Bloggs, who nobody knows, walks down the street and gets racially abused. He goes into a shop and people think he is going to steal something. He cannot get a job.
The funniest racism is the racism between minorities. It's something you don't see dramatized, but almost every minority I know who's my age, they have these funny stories about their parents stereotyping other minorities.
The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.
A fundamental but very challenging part of my work is moving white people from an individual understanding of racism - i.e. only some people are racist and those people are bad - to a structural understanding.
Racism may be as systemic as it always was. It is the great problem of America. It's the one stumbling block that I don't believe was ever smoothed over.
Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.
My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs, and just being a black person, I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.
The way you start to break down systemic racism is to start building individual relationships with people who are not like you.
I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.
That's what is always fascinating about racism - how it is allowed, if not encouraged, to flourish freely in public spaces, the way racism and bigotry are so often unquestioned.
I have often said I come from a family of unreliable narrators. I tend to believe their struggles with racism, identity, nationality do dovetail with my motivation to write.
We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?
My whiteness, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, family support, and so many other factors shield me from some of the worst possible consequences - often fatal ones - that result from the toxic combination of misogyny, racism, and anti-trans sentiment.
Racism is essentially natural, it's old fashioned it's an evolutionary phase that we're going through. Ultimately it wont exist.
