“A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility”, by Taner Akcam

Pg. 376

Despite the numerous historical examples that could be presented for both of these positions, what is important is how Turkish society perceived “human rights” and “democracy” in this context. Because the Great Powers used these terms to legitimize the most obvious colonial moves, Turks began to view both notions as “Western hypocrisy.” Beyond the specific historical reasons, the fundamental problems that lay behind the failure to bring the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice persist to this day. If it is not possible to draw a clear line of division between humanitarian goals, on the one hand, and a state’s economic and political interests, on the other, then how are we to come to a consensus about ethical norms? And on what legal and theoretical grounds shall we justify international interventions? These questions remain unanswered.

“The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography”, by Sidney Poitier

Pg. 127

When you’re addressing power, don’t expect it to crumble willingly. If you’re going to say, “Hey now, look you guys, please look at what you did and look at yourselves and punish yourselves and at least try to square this thing, right?” — well, you’ll make even slower progress at that than you would expect. I mean, even the most modest expectations are going to be unfulfilled…

There are also people who say, “Hey, after thirty years of affirmative action, they’ve got it made. Black people — it’s their own fault if they can’t make it today.”

Yeah, well, of course they say that. And they say it not just about black people. They say it in every country. We did something for you people, whoever “you” are. And we think that’s quite enough now.

That’s the gist of it: we’ve done something, and we think it’s enough. It may not be perfect, but it damn sure comes close to being okay. Now let us hear you applaud that for a little while. And thank us. And you can take that hat off your head when you come in here thanking us.

That’s the way it is. But let’s not get stuck there. We have miles to go before we sleep. We have lots to do, and some things just aren’t going to get done, you know?

“Why So Slow?, The Advancement of Women”, by Virginia Valian

Pg. 180

Since the unrealistic nature of white men’s expectations has not been acknowledged,  and since the implications of gender and race schemas have not been appreciated, many white men are unable to understand or come to terms with their failures. They perceive that they are losing out to some women and minority men, but they cannot see the loss as justified because they are in the grip of race and gender schemas portraying non-whites and women as professionally inferior to white men. For many white men, losing out to a minority person or a woman engenders shame and anger and also compromises their masculine identity. some then invoke the explanation of “reverse discrimination” to claim that those were less able and qualified receive unfair advantages…

Gender schemas do men a disservice. They prevent men from being realistic and objective and require men to be successful in order to maintain an essential part of their self-concept — their masculine identity. They lead men to think that they are more capable than they are and encourage them to have overly high aspirations.

Pg. 183

To the extent that women see success as due to random or uncontrollable factors, they will profit from it less. Seeing success in those terms is particularly disadvantageous because it leaves women with nothing to analyze, nothing to learn from success. People cannot build on an experience they attribute to luck. To benefit cognitively from a success and increase the chances for the next one, a person must figure out what was causally relevant. Successes are linked to each other. Each success teaches a lesson that can be used to advantage for the next attempt. There is a causal chain from one success to another, even if that chain is harder for women to construct.

I have said that it is rational for women to attribute more of a role to luck than men do, because cause-and-effect relations hold less strongly in their world. But it is even more rational for women to understand how the inaccurate evaluations of their success weekend the causal chain between ability and success. That understanding will, in turn, allow women to perform a more sophisticated analysis of their situation and develop a more sophisticated strategy to deal with it. Perhaps the single most important factor in success is flexible perseverance — “flexible” because simply doing more work in the same way may not be enough. Long-term success requires having a strategy and refining it in the light of short-term successes and failures.

“Lifting the White Veil: An Exploration of White American Culture in a Multiracial Context”, by Jeff Hitchcock

Pg. 201

The main point of this book is that we who are white Americans should be a little more aware of our race and our culture, that is to say, our whiteness. We need to understand how we presently fit within the racial structure of the United States. When Robert Terry, in 1981, said, “To be white in America is not to have to think about it,” he was describing a situation as it was, not as he thought he should be. We do have to think about it. True, even today many white people can blissfully ignore their racial and cultural background and identity. But as the country becomes increasingly multiracial in composition, the space in which we can wear racial blinders is diminishing.

“Lifting the White Veil: An Exploration of White American Culture in a Multiracial Context”, by Jeff Hitchcock

Pg. 45

It is a common finding that white Americans as a group score significantly higher on IQ tests than do black Americans. Does this prove that white Americans are more intelligent?…

Consider a simple experiment. Take a group of 200 infants. During their childhood, call half of them low-IQ, tell them no one from their group has even been President of the United States, chronically underfund their schools, and to keep it interesting, give them a daily sprinkling of lead paint chips in their diet. When they reach age 18, give both groups the same IQ test under identical conditions. Would you expect the high-IQ group to actually score higher? Probably so. Would it prove the high-IQ group has an innate genetic superiority? Probably not.

“Bridging the Class Divide: And Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing”, by Linda Stout

Pg. 87

Oppression is part of the fabric of everything we do and experience — what we’re taught in school; what we see in the media and on billboards; the images of beauty we absorb from our culture. In school we learn about white men who supposedly discovered everything and invented everything. In a majority of churches, women in the Bible are presented in negative ways; we’re taught that men are supposed to have power over women. Men are always shown as the powerful ones. Heterosexual couples are always shown as the basis for a family; theirs is the only acceptable kind of love. Poor people are shown as stupid and lazy, often as Southern, so many people actually associate Southern accents with being dumb. All these images reflect institutionalized oppression…

the great weight of the system operates as if the oppressive images were true instead of lies and distortions. For example, if you are poor and you want to buy a used car, you soon find out you’ll have to pay more interest, make higher payments, than for a new car. So you end up having to buy a new car… Institutionalized oppression is when a prejudice is supported by all the systems of society with all the power to back up that prejudice, so that it becomes the canon — the accepted way.

“The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege”, by Robert Jensen, part 2

Pg. 89-90

The United States is a white country. By that I don’t just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (again, for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption — especially by people with power — that American equals white…

At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

It appears the president intended the phrase “people whose skin color may not be the same as ours” to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is “ours,” he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are “a different color than white.” So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means that those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are… ? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if “their skin color may not be the same as ours”?

“The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege”, by Robert Jensen

Page 6:

What does white supremacy mean in day-to-day life? In the United States, a black applicant with no criminal record is less likely to receive a callback from a potential employer than a white applicant with a felony conviction. In other words, being black is more of a liability in finding a job than being a convicted criminal. Studies show that from the mid-1990s through the beginning of the new century, such discrimination in low-wage jobs has remained constant. These statistics led the researcher to conclude that even if employers are not consciously discriminating against black applicants, ‘there are a lot of unconscious processes that come into play that bias or distort employers’ perceptions of the quality or suitability of minority applicants.’