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

by Robin DiAngelo

While everyone of every race holds prejudice and can discriminate against someone of another race, in the US and other white/settler nations, only white people are in the position to oppress people of color collectively and throughout the whole of society. This claim defines racism as a fluid dynamic that changes direction according to each group’s ratio in a given space. While a white person may have been picked on—even mercilessly—by being in the numerical minority in a specific context, the individual was experiencing race prejudice and discrimination, not racism. This distinction is not meant to minimize the white person’s experience, but aims to clarify and to prevent rendering the terms interchangeable and thus meaningless.