# Quote — Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings

> Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.

- Author: [Cathy Park Hong](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong.md)
- Book: [Minor Feelings](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong/minor-feelings.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cathy_Park_Hong#Minor_Feelings:_An_Asian_American_Reckoning_(2020)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong/minor-feelings/patiently-educating-a-clueless

## More from this book

> I’d rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life is to be held accountable to history.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong/minor-feelings/id-rather-be-indebted.md)

> Because I didn't learn the language until I started school, I associated English with everything hard: the chalkboard with diagrammed sentences, the syllables in my mouth like hard slippery marbles. English was not an expression of me but a language that was out to get me, threaded with invisible trip wires that could expose me at the slightest misstep.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong/minor-feelings/because-i-didnt.md)

> When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cathy-park-hong/minor-feelings/when-i-hear.md)