We keep this system in place by...

"As long as we are being taught that where you end up is about your effort then the fact of inequality between groups of people is going to come to be seen as natural evidence of some people’s superiority and other people’s inferiority.

If you don’t educate underprivileged folks because you figure it’s just a waste of money, if you don’t provide equal job opportunity or equal housing opportunity, and if you don’t really care if there’s disproportionate incarceration because you think “those folks are all bad anyway,” then you create this sort of snowball effect where the uneducated and those who can’t find housing and can’t find jobs will almost invariably have to find some way to survive that will involve in some cases criminal activity which then will land them in jail.

So ultimately, we sort of keep this system in place by a combination of actual practices in the job market, the school system, etc, also, the underlying ideological glue of the society"

-Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequalty (Movie)

If you are not part of the power structure...

"The reality is if you are not part of the power structure, if you are not one of those who make the decisions, I think you are hyper-aware of what is happening. You are hyper-aware of the decisions that are being made and how they impact you. For the folks who are in positions of power, they are not… they don’t need to think about it. They don’t need to critique it, it works for them."-Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequalty (Movie)

white privilege

“ When well-meaning white people who have never thought about privileged systems or whiteness, or race, start out, the teaching is very necessary to get them past blame, shame, and guilt. They were born into circumstances they didn’t invent. They were born into history they didn’t invent. Rather than have them do the solipsistic thing of getting all self-involved in this, it’s just very important to hold them, while they get into a rational frame of mind, that the big systems exist that they didn’t know about, they were born into them. We were not taught history, but this is history they are learning. The American myth of meritocracy doesn’t apply. Meritocracy means whatever you ended up with must be what you wanted and worked for, and what you earned and deserved individually. They’ve been taught that. It’s true, huge systems that one is born into will bear on what one can do with one’s life, and how won’t see. And that’s the part that has been missing from that education. So these white women breaking up over their first experience of hearing about racism, they are basket-cases partly because of their bad, bad, education, and their inability to see systemically, and it’s not their fault. But they need to be hustled past it as quickly as possible with some remedial words which I think I’ve just spoken here. You did not invent the systems you were born into. They are there, and you were taught not to see them and you’re a very student of what you’ve been taught.”-Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequalty (Movie)

white privilege

"Recently I was in a meeting with a white woman, and an African American woman where the African American woman was trying to explain to the white woman, with me as a witness, that what the white woman was doing was very oppressive to her. The African American woman took great pains to be respectful to be as articulate as she could, while being kind at the same time, and really told a lot of stories in the hopes that this white woman would understand in what ways she was oppressing her. And each time that the African American woman would tell her story, the white woman would say, “No, you were wrong. No, you must not understand what I was telling you. You obviously don’t know me very well. I would never do that.” I call this behavior of always being right, always thinking that you know better than a person of color, always trying to make sure that things work for you, as internalized white superiority. I rarely really understand when I’m exhibiting behavior that is racist and internalized white superiority in its nature."-Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequality (Movie)

Femme Privilege

There's No Such Thing As Femme Privilege

http://femmedreamboat.tumblr.com/post/39734380982/femme-privilege-does-not-exist

Own-up

How to accept being called out?

http://tooyoungforthelivingdead.tumblr.com/called-out