Macklemore Quotes

The antidote to white fragility is ongoing and lifelong and includes sustained engagement, humility, and education.

Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it's not going to get better... people have to be made to feel uncomfortable, and especially white people, because we're comfortable. We still have no clue what being born white means.

I'm your typical highly educated, progressive white dude. I've lived my life resisting racism both within myself and in the society around me.

One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in.

As part of my work, I teach, lead and participate in affinity groups, facilitate workshops, and mentor other whites on recognizing and interrupting racism in our lives.

You have to be an anti-racist to not be racist. Because it's just a cultural tide that will pull you into it if you're not swimming against it.

My wife says I spend my life trying to teach white folks. I'm not so sure I'm proud of it, but she's right.

A race-transcendent politics is most likely to succeed when the white community takes responsibility for overcoming its racism, not when the black community decides to forget it.

If you're white, and you really want to help change things, why not start with yourself?

One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we've caused.

Like a nontechnical user trying to understand a technical problem, our racial illiteracy limits our ability to have meaningful conversations about race.

Just having people saying no to racism on a commercial changes nothing.

When we sit and think about what the world needs to looks like in order for black lives to actually matter, there is a debate: What is going to make our communities safe? How do we deal with harm? How do we solve problems that come up in our communities?

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.

Anyone who understands anti-racist work, a white person specifically, understands that it is not black people's responsibility, or any person of color's responsibility, to dismantle the structures that keep white people in positions of power. We do our job to thrive, to survive. To protect ourselves, to sit together and feel better and to heal.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

If white people on a larger scale really de-emphasized their whiteness, I think that would have to transform the Republican party into a more responsible party that couldn't get by on just playing into white resentment, especially white middle and working class resentment while taking care of the interests of plutocrats.

We will not stop fighting until every single black life is provided the type of love and support we so desperately deserve.

We say Black lives matter, but a lot of white folks don't know Black folk.

We want to see a world where black lives matter in order for us to get to a world where all of our humanity is respected.

Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us.

Many of us actively working to interrupt racism continually hear complaints about the 'gotcha' culture of white anti-racism. There is a stereotype that we are looking for every incident we can find so we can spring out, point our fingers, and shout, 'You're a racist!'

We continue to confront racism from our past and our present, which is why we must hold everyone, from the highest offices to our own families, accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is - wrong.

The first thing that Black Lives Matter had to do was remind people that racism existed in this country because when we had Obama, people thought we were post-racial. That was the debate. Is racism over? And very quickly, we understood that it was not over.

We've said from the very beginning Black Lives Matter is a network and also, as a broad set of individuals, is an organization moving to transform the way our society values black lives. It's not an 'Internet movement.'