Tim Wise Quotes

#1. There are lots of research, of course, saying that a vast majority of us have been exposed to racial biases and stereotypes and, to some extent, we've internalized them, because that's so ubiquitous. That's why I'm so bored with the conversation about who's a racist and who's not.

Tim Wise

#2. If we don't figure out a way to create equity, real equity, of opportunity and access, to good schools, housing, health care, and decent paying jobs, we're not going to survive as a productive and healthy society.

Tim Wise

#3. For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.

Tim Wise

#4. To believe that the United States is post-racial requires an almost incomprehensible inability or unwillingness to stare truth in the face.

Tim Wise

#5. Mass media over-represents persons of color in negative ways, especially as criminals, relative to the share of crime actually done by such persons.

Tim Wise

#6. Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.

Tim Wise

#7. It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

Tim Wise

#8. Here's the reality. The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god.

Tim Wise

#9. The system of white supremacy is intended to make folks of color doubt themselves, their intelligence, their abilities, their very sanity. And so it's important to remember that folks of color know their own realities.

Tim Wise

#10. Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.

Tim Wise

#11. When you allow racial disparity and institutional inequity to affect one part of the country, eventually it's coming back to get everyone.

Tim Wise

#12. I think for folks of color the key to combatting racism period is a) trusting their instincts and b) solidarity with one another.

Tim Wise

#13. Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias rather than exaggerate them.

Tim Wise

#14. In other words, to whatever extent migrants are crossing the border and thereby (ostensibly) taking other people's jobs, it is only because the economy of Mexico has been considerably undermined by the policies of our country.

Tim Wise

#15. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

Tim Wise

#16. Only blacks can play the race card, apparently; only they think in racial terms, at least to hear white America tell it.

Tim Wise

#17. If you want to know if racism is a problem in your country, you might not want to ask white people.

Tim Wise

#18. Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.

Tim Wise

#19. Violating the 4th Amendment guarantees against illegal searches and seizures is not the way to solve crime problems.

Tim Wise

#20. In short, and let us be clear on it: race is not a card. It determines whom the dealer is, and who gets dealt.

Tim Wise

#21. Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

Tim Wise

#22. There won't be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won't be any more white folks around who actually remember them ...

Tim Wise

#23. People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.

Tim Wise

#24. Our failure as a society to properly acknowledge and confront the psychological, social, and political effects of white privilege has perpetuated racial inequality and race-based political resentments.

Tim Wise

#25. The power of resistance is to set an example: not necessarily to change the person with whom you disagree, but to empower the one who is watching and whose growth is not yet completed, whose path is not at all clear, whose direction is still very much up in the proverbial air.

Tim Wise

#26. Being asked to describe what 'post-racial' means is a bit like being asked to describe a leprechaun, cold fusion or unicorns: we know what is meant, but, if we are willing to be honest, we also know that none of the four describe something real, something tangible, something true.

Tim Wise

#27. Old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

Tim Wise

#28. Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

Tim Wise

#29. As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular 'hook' upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release.

Tim Wise

#30. You can't organize people if you don't love them. And however hard it can be to love the racist you come in contact with; doing so is the first obligation of a white antiracist.

Tim Wise

#31. The denial of racism is a form of racism itself.

Tim Wise

#32. Jesus was not born in a manger in central Pennsylvania. He was a man of color. And the fact that we have represented him for centuries literally as a white man speaks to the entire history of white supremacy.

Tim Wise