White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

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INTRODUCTION WE CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a group of white people seated in front of us. We are in their workplace and have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race. The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man is pounding his fist on the table. As he pounds, he yells, “A white person can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see forty employees, thirty-eight of whom are white. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why doesn’t he notice the effect this outburst is having on the few people of color in the room? Why are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or tuning out? I have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism. White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation and inequality. As a result, we are insulated from racial stress, at the same time that we come to feel entitled to and deserving of our advantage. Given how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable—the mere suggestion that
eing white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility. Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage. Summarizing the familiar patterns of white people’s responses to racial discomfort as white fragility has resonated for many people. The sensibility is so familiar because whereas our personal narratives vary, we are all swimming in the same racial water. For me, the recognition has come through my work. I have a rare job; on a daily basis I lead primarily white audiences in discussions of race, something many of us avoid at all costs. In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer, I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way. The very idea that they would be required to attend a workshop on racism outraged them. They entered the room angry and made that feeling clear to us throughout the day as they slammed their notebooks down on the table, refused to participate in exercises, and argued against any and all points. I couldn’t understand their resentment or disinterest in learning more about such a complex social dynamic as racism. These reactions were especially perplexing when there were few or no people of color in their workplace, and they had the opportunity to learn from my cofacilitators of color. I assumed that in these circumstances, an educational workshop on racism would be appreciated. After all, didn’t the lack of diversity indicate a problem or at least suggest that some perspectives were missing? Or that the participants might be undereducated about race because of scant crossracial interactions? It took me several years to see beneath these reactions. At first I was intimidated by them, and they held me back and kept me careful and quiet. But over time, I began to see what lay beneath this anger and resistance to discuss race or listen to people of color. I observed consistent responses from a variety of participants. For example, many white participants who
Page 4 and 5: Table of Contents Cover Title Page
Page 6 and 7: 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
Page 8 and 9: 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
Page 10 and 11: Copyright Contents 1 The Challenges
Page 12: antiracist understanding and essent
Page 16 and 17: CONTENTS Foreword by Michael Eric D
Page 18 and 19: Robin DiAngelo is here to announce,
Page 20 and 21: AUTHOR’S NOTE IDENTITY POLITICS T
Page 22 and 23: This book looks at the United State
Page 26 and 27: lived in white suburban neighborhoo
Page 28 and 29: we can expect to live. 2 This book
Page 30 and 31: don’t even know you? I can say so
Page 32 and 33: Gates’s son has clearly been hand
Page 34 and 35: how that assimilation has shaped hi
Page 36 and 37: CHAPTER 2 RACISM AND WHITE SUPREMAC
Page 38 and 39: colonial law in the late 1600s. By
Page 40 and 41: that are based on little or no expe
Page 42 and 43: The racial ideology that circulates
Page 44 and 45: accidental, occasional, or avoidabl
Page 46 and 47: certainly an amazing baseball playe
Page 48 and 49: with these images of white supremac
Page 50 and 51: Race scholars use the term white su
Page 52 and 53: You start out in 1954 by saying,
Page 54 and 55: you think went on there? Were you e
Page 56 and 57: mouth and say, “Shush!” When wh
Page 58 and 59: we asked the president if he was a
Page 60 and 61: We might think of conscious racial
Page 62 and 63: this incident, I texted my friend a
Page 64 and 65: at all levels of society, and myria
Page 66 and 67: simultaneously be good people and p
Page 68 and 69: CHAPTER 4 HOW DOES RACE SHAPE THE L
Page 70 and 71: so natural that I do not have to th
Page 72 and 73: FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT I am free to mo
Page 74 and 75:
White solidarity is the unspoken ag
Page 76 and 77:
twenty-nine, all are white, and all
Page 78 and 79:
spaces (because of decades of de ju
Page 80 and 81:
The expectation that people of colo
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wider societal level: it dictated w
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• Need to maintain white solidari
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Prejudiced Mean-spirited Old Southe
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mother, we all knew that the mother
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claims to value diversity: “I kno
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say that they work in a diverse env
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friends, this absence of conversati
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environment as upward mobility gene
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ecause the person understands that
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CHAPTER 6 ANTI-BLACKNESS But all ou
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not exist without the other. In thi
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toy gun in the park. We see anti-bl
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message in the narrative of “welf
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• Some black children may be inno
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When ideologies such as color blind
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Capital can shift with the field, f
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In a society in which whites are do
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CHAPTER 8 THE RESULT: WHITE FRAGILI
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extent racism is addressed or chall
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in the room. At break, several othe
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CHAPTER 9 WHITE FRAGILITY IN ACTION
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to Jason’s story invalidates his
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Given that these are strong emotion
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• As a white person, I know the b
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5. Feedback must be given immediate
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the power of implicit bias and the
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separate it from its delivery and a
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short, white women’s tears have a
Page 138 and 139:
Global Journalism and Communication
Page 140 and 141:
THE MEN WHO LOVE US In addition to
Page 142 and 143:
CHAPTER 12 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
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However, from a transformed paradig
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These assumptions might interrupt r
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inherently offensive—many would n
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We can interrupt our white fragilit
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white identity for my own liberatio
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people of color had chosen to prote
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RESOURCES FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
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Raising Race Conscious Children. Ho
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Idabelle Fo
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7. Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the
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Times, August 22, 2017, https://www
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University of Washington School of
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1. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White
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Social Identity, ed. Thomas Nakayam
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BEACON PRESS Boston, Massachusetts
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White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

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