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

by Robin DiAngelo

We have a particular hatred for “uppity” blacks, those who dare to step out of their place and look us in the eye as equals.

“the trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship.

habitus can be thought of as a person’s familiar ways of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to social cues.

Field is the specific social context the person is in—a party, the workplace, or a school.

Capital is the social value people hold in a particular field; how they perceive themselves and are perceived by others in terms of their power or status.

Habitus includes a person’s internalized awareness of their status, as well as responses to the status of others.

Habitus maintains our social comfort and helps us regain it when those around us do not act in familiar and acceptable ways. We don’t respond consciously to disequilibrium in the habitus; we respond unconsciously.

When disequilibrium occurs—when there is an interruption to that which is familiar and taken for granted—white fragility restores equilibrium and returns the capital “lost” via the challenge.

white people’s moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity with it. In a white supremacist context, white identity largely rests on a foundation of (superficial) racial tolerance and acceptance.

whites invoke the power to choose when, how, and to what extent racism is addressed or challenged.

“Because the new racial climate in America forbids the open expression of racially based feelings, views, and positions, when whites discuss issues that make them uncomfortable, they become almost incomprehensible.”

The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture in which racial disparity is infused limits white people’s ability to form authentic connections across racial lines and perpetuates a cycle that keeps racism in place.

privilege is defined as a legitimization of one’s entitlement to resources, it can also be defined as permission to escape or avoid any challenges to this entitlement.”

White fragility is much more than mere defensiveness or whining. It may be conceptualized as the sociology of dominance: an outcome of white people’s socialization into white supremacy and a means to protect, maintain, and reproduce white supremacy.

I know that I have blind spots and unconscious investments in racism. My investments are reinforced every day in mainstream society. I did not set this system up, but it does unfairly benefit me, I do use it to my advantage, and I am responsible for interrupting it. I need to work hard to change my role in this system, but I can’t do it alone.

The problem with this guideline is that respect is rarely defined, and what feels respectful to white people can be exactly what does not create a respectful environment for people of color.

An antidote to white fragility is to build up our stamina to bear witness to the pain of racism that we cause, not to impose conditions that require people of color to continually validate our denial.

white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.

stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them.

emotions are not natural; they are the result of the frameworks we are using to make sense of social relations. And of course, social relations are political.

oft-repeated warning from my African American colleagues: “When a white woman cries, a black man gets hurt.”

In a common but particularly subversive move, racism becomes about white distress, white suffering, and white victimization.

For people of color, our tears demonstrate our racial insulation and privilege.

When white men come to the rescue of white women in cross-racial settings, patriarchy is reinforced as they play savior to our damsel in distress.

Because our emotions are indicators of our internal frameworks, they can serve as entry points into the deeper self-awareness that leads to this action.

Racism is a multilayered system embedded in our culture.

Giving us white people feedback on our racism is risky for people of color, so we can consider the feedback a sign of trust.

White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important.

What they are looking for is not perfection but the ability to talk about what happened, the ability to repair.

We can interrupt our white fragility and build our capacity to sustain cross-racial honesty by being willing to tolerate the discomfort associated with an honest appraisal and discussion of our internalized superiority and racial privilege.

my actions are driven by my own need for integrity, not a need to correct or change someone else.

white fragility is fundamentally a matter of survival for people of color.

Since my learning will never be finished, neither will the need to hold me accountable.

by complaining to one person of color about the unfairness of feedback from another person of color (no matter how diplomatically or indirectly I try to mask my complaint), I am pressuring a person of color to collude with my racism.

most pernicious form of pressure on people of color: the pressure to collude with white fragility by minimizing their racial experiences to accommodate white denial and defensiveness.