Other people are raced, we are just people.
-- Richard Dyer (The Matter of Whiteness)

Importance: This statement introduces the author's concern with whiteness as a matter of principle: if scholars study other races and scrutinize racial imagery in media, failing to do the same for white people and imagery of white people creates the notion that white people need not be studied, since they are just 'people.' Adjectives such as 'colored,' or 'black,' or 'Asian,' all lead to the same notion that other people can be of other races, but white people are not a race, just people.

[Mary and Christ] are what one should aspire to be like and yet also what one can never be. This sets up a dynamic of aspiration, of striving to be, to transcend, and to go on striving in the face of the impossibility of transcendence.
-- Richard Dyer (The Matter of Whiteness)

Importance: Dyer's study of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ leads...