"My dear friends, please try to understand that whiteness is limitless possibility. It is universal and invisible. That’s why many of you are offended by any reference to race. You believe you are acting and thinking neutrally, objectively, without preference for one group or the next, including your own. You see yourselves as colorless until black folk dump the garbage of race on your heads. At your best moments you may concede that you started the race game, but you swear to the God you love that it is we black folk who keep it going. You have no idea how absurd that notion is, and yet we have grown accustomed to your defiance of common sense."

in Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 53.