Quotes by Robert Jensen

“We have consistently been asked to fulfill more responsibilities without being given the concomitant authority, ... we now find ourselves being called upon to perform coordination for multiple agencies and are increasingly required to conduct time-consuming search procedures.”

“The Heart of Whiteness”

“We still have 1,500 or 1,400 people unidentified from the tsunami. I dont think this one will take that long, but I dont know. There is still a lot of water,”

“On Sept. 10 there was pain and suffering of a world manifested by power. There is nothing special about Sept. 11; there is nothing special about our pain in this country. It mattered no more or no less than the pain and suffering of the rest of the world that day. We cannot contribute to the lives lost by innocent civilians because of a corruption of power.”

“This is not going to be quick or easy. It is not something that will be handled in a couple of weeks.”

“I think its a good thing. I bet itll fill that truck up. Its a pretty giving community and Im glad to be a part of it.”

“The world has to address how mass fatality incidents are dealt with. Because ultimately it is the families who suffer.”

“The tsunami was the first time that countries wanted a say in how their dead were returned home. Now there is movement between countries, and at Interpol, to ask what agreements can be reached to avoid confusion the next time.”

“Without identification and a death certificate, there is no life insurance payout or probate.”

I am afraid of sex as sex is defined by the dominant culture, as practiced all around me, and projected onto magazine pages, billboards, and movie screens. I am afraid of sex because I am afraid of domination, cruelty, violence, and death. I am afraid of sex because sex has hurt me and hurt lots of people I know, and because I have hurt others with sex in the past. I know that there are people out there who have been hurt by sex in ways that are beyond words, who have experienced a depth of pain that I will never fully understand. And I know there are people who are dead because of sex. Yes, I am afraid of sex. How could I not be?

Those four effects described above—shaping a male-dominant view of sexuality, initiating victims, contributing to difficulty in separating sexual fantasy and reality, and providing a training manual for abusers—are at work just as much with men who have not engaged in activities that meet the legal definition of rape. Here we have to let go of a comforting illusion—that there is some clear line between men who rape and men who dont, between the bad guys and the good guys.

Our goal should be not to redefine masculinity, but to abolish it.

But too often men react to women in positions of power with misogyny, often in sexualized terms. I have heard men in such situations talk about how Id like to fuck that bitch and teach her a lesson, for example. That kind of reaction demonstrates that no matter what the class position of a man and woman, men can use the weapon of sexualized violence to attempt to assert their dominance.

I could settle for being a man, or I could struggle to become a human being.

The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White Peoples Burden is to civilize ourselves.

Whiteness–the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white–is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant society gives to whiteness, we white people are degraded and depraved.