“Making space for another viewpoint does not negate yours. Quite the opposite — it provides more context and framework for your own experience.” (Kiara Goodwin, The Everygirl)

Meg Guliford on being a black grad student right now: “I’m disappointed with and disheartened by the institutional expectation that pressing forward with little interruption while trying to process all this heartbreak is healthy.”

“These ‘rules’ have shown impressive staying power. From cocktail parties to kitchen tables, these seemingly fascinating bits of grammar trivia have been repeated over and over, in some cases for centuries. Too bad they’re not true.”

“But there’s also the passive sexism — the status quo — that people have trouble seeing or don’t think they engage in until they catch themselves doing it because it’s so ingrained, that we also desperately need to fix.”

“It’s easy to think of our work in universities as indulgent when so many lives are at stake, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Universities, when done right, can be crucibles of equality.”

“46% of the small businesses in America are off the grid, meaning they are operating without a website. The idea of 100 Project is to transform small businesses in Detroit by getting 100 Detroit neighborhood businesses on the grid.”  

“Maybe banned books are such a problem because when your tokens of diversity are so limited, losing even one is a huge blow. So the solution isn’t saying ‘unban this book!’ The solution is to make more books like it.”

“It’s not enough to provide a single path from low floor to high ceiling; we need to provide wide walls so that kids can explore multiple pathways from floor to ceiling.”

“How far should I stray beyond my own areas of expertise and the research work I have done? What are the boundaries between discussing this research, offering my opinion, and ventriloquizing other people’s experiences?”

“Those predators you’re so worried will sneak into the Target bathroom? They’re all around you.
 
They are your Priest, your kid’s coach, your neighbor, your uncle, your youth group leader, your United States Speaker of the House.”

“We read to prepare for life. It follows, then, that we are raising our boys to dismiss other people’s experiences, and to see their needs and concerns as the center of things. We are raising our boys to lack empathy.”

“Maybe I should just quit. Stop talking about diversity, just shut up about it. Go back to coding. I like building products better than being a broken record about diversity anyways.”

The Academy Awards are a cultural phenomenon. . . . They are not so much a barometer of quality but a barometer of what the many-faced mirror of the film business is interested in, and according to the last couple of years, it is interested in emphasizing the status quo.

Girls who read, learned, climbed trees, fought back, solved mysteries, fell down, got back up, struggled, persevered. Girls who survived crazy hardships or learned valuable lessons. Girls who looked just like me. Brave girls. Smart girls. Funny girls. White girls.