Quotes & Sayings About Internalized Racism

We're afraid the others will think we're agringadas because we don't speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be "real" Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. — Gloria E. Anzaldua

As a result of this "racism smog," many of our children have internalized all of the negative stereotypes inherent in our society's views of black people. A student teacher at Southern University told me that she didn't know what to say when an African American eighth-grade boy came up to her and said, "They made us the slaves because we were dumb, right, Ms. Summers?" Working with a middle schooler on her math, a tutor was admonished, "Why you trying to teach me to multiply, Ms. L.? Black people don't multiply; black people just add and subtract. White people multiply. — Lisa Delpit

The larger society was willing to let the frustrations born of racism's violence become internalized and consume its victims. America's horror was only expressed when the aggression turned outward, when the ghetto and its controls could no longer contain its destructiveness. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We live in a racist world. Everywhere there is racism. We say to White people, "You really have to examine how you behave in the world. You are responsible for deconstructing internalized racism and being part of a ongoing process of decolonizing yourself." — Eve Ensler

... "white supremacy" is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term "internalized racism"- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term "white supremacy" enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise "white supremacist control" over other black people. — Bell Hooks

What is the black shadow? It's the running inner dialogue we have with ourselves all day long about our fears of being inferior as black people. It is our internalization of the white man's lie that blacks are inferior to whites
the very lie that was the foundation of our ancestors' enslavement. The black shadow is more than simply internalized racism; it's also our complex feelings of fear and despair about being black, and consequently our longing to be less black. — Marlene F. Watson