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

by Robin DiAngelo

White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing self-awareness, continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how we do so.

“I am white and I have had X experience. How did X shape me as a result of also being white?”

For example, Armenians won their case to be reclassified as white with the help of a scientific witness who claimed they were scientifically “Caucasian.”

Everyone has prejudice, and everyone discriminates.

When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-images of individual actors.

When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color. People of color do not have this power and privilege over white people.

White resistance to the term white supremacy prevents us from examining how these messages shape us.

But when white Northerners saw the violence black people—including women and children—endured during the civil rights protests, they were appalled. These images became the archetypes of racists.

RACIST = BAD NOT RACIST = GOOD Ignorant Progressive Bigoted Educated Prejudiced open-minded Mean-spirited Well-intentioned

Scholars have argued that whites split off from themselves and project onto black people the aspects that we don’t want to own in ourselves.