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

by Robin DiAngelo

“It’s been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we’re protesting America.”

To not use my position this way is to uphold racism, and that is unacceptable;

we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true? How does this lens change my understanding of racial dynamics? How can my unease help reveal the unexamined assumptions I have been making? Is it possible that because I am white, there are some racial dynamics that I can’t see? Am I willing to consider that possibility? If I am not willing to do so, then why not?

Because race is a product of social forces, it has also manifested itself along class lines; poor and working-class people were not always perceived as fully white.11 In a society that grants fewer opportunities to those not seen as white, economic and racial forces are inseparable.

However, poor and working-class whites were eventually granted full entry into whiteness as a way to exploit labor. If poor whites were focused on feeling superior to those below them in status, they were less focused on those above. The poor and working classes, if united across race, could be a powerful force.

People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual. Whites hold the social and institutional positions in society to infuse their racial prejudice into the laws, policies, practices, and norms of society in a way that people of color do not. A person of color may refuse to wait on me if I enter a shop, but people of color cannot pass legislation that prohibits me and everyone like me from buying a home in a certain neighborhood.