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

by Robin DiAngelo

Whiteness, however, has remained constant. In the equation of race, another metaphor for race beckons; whiteness is the unchanging variable.

But whiteness goes even one better: it is a category of identity that is most useful when its very existence is denied.

Whiteness, like race, may not be true—it’s not a biologically heritable characteristic that has roots in physiological structures or in genes or chromosomes. But it is real, in the sense that societies and rights and goods and resources and privileges have been built on its foundation.

DiAngelo knows that what she is saying to white folk in this book is what so many black folks have thought and believed and said over the years but couldn’t be heard because white ears were too sensitive, white souls too fragile.

White fragility is a truly generative idea; it is a crucial concept that inspires us to think more deeply about how white folk understand their whiteness and react defensively to being called to account for how that whiteness has gone under the radar of race for far too long.

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

We cannot possibly name the nemeses of democracy or truth or justice or equality if we cannot name the identities to which they have been attached.

White Fragility is a vital, necessary, and beautiful book, a bracing call to white folk everywhere to see their whiteness for what it is and to seize the opportunity to make things better now.

The term identity politics refers to the focus on the barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality.

While implicit bias is always at play because all humans have bias, inequity can occur simply through homogeneity; if I am not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be motivated to remove them. Nor will I be motivated to remove the barriers if they provide an advantage to which I feel entitled.

All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics:

men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the controlling group is universal.

white women

it was white men who granted it.

the Voting Rig...

Naming who has access and who doesn’t guides our efforts in ch...

I am mainly writing to a white audience; when I use the terms us and we, I am referring to the white collective.

So, though I am centering the white voice, I am also using my insider status to challenge racism.

People who do not identify as white may also find this book helpful for understanding why it is so often difficult to talk to white people about racism.

This book looks at the United States and the general context of the West (United States, Canada, and Europe).

I use the terms white and people of color to indicate the two macro-level, socially recognized divisions of the racial hierarchy.

temporarily suspending individuality to focus on group identity is healthy for white people, doing so has very different impacts on people of color.

The dominant society will assign them the racial identity they most physically resemble, but their own internal racial identity may not align with the assigned identity.

The dynamics of what is termed “passing”—being perceived as white—will also shape a multiracial person’s identity, as passing will grant him or her society’s rewards of whiteness.

people of mixed racial heritage who pass as white may also experience resentment and isolation from people of color who cannot pass.

there is no corresponding term for the ability to pass as a person of color. This highlights the fact that, in a racist society, the desired direction is always toward whiteness and away from being perceived as a person of color.)

saliency. We all occupy multiple and intersecting social positionalities. I am white, but I am also a cisgender woman, able-bodied, and middle-aged. These identities don’t cancel out one another; each is more or less salient in different contexts.

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.

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.

participants. For example, many white participants who lived in white suburban neighborhoods and had no sustained relationships with people of color were absolutely certain that they held no racial prejudice or animosity.

Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a matter of nice people versus mean people.

Most appeared to believe that racism ended in 1865 with t...

being white had meaning and a refusal to acknowledge any advan...

Many participants claimed white people were now the oppressed group, and they deeply resented anything perceived to be a form of affirmative action. These responses were so predictable—so consistent and reliable—I was able to stop taking the resistance personally, g...

pillars of white...

I could see the power of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism a...

themselves from the forces of so...

how we are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts committed by individual people, rather than as a...

worked. It became clear that if I believed that only bad people who intended to hurt others because of race could ever do so, I would respond with outrage to any suggestion that I was involved in racism.

on). I came to see that the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand it.

If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth.

These responses spur the daily frustrations and indignities people of color endure from white people who see themselves as open-minded and thus not racist.

white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.

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.

While there is no biological race as we understand it (see chapter 2), race as a social construct has profound significance and shapes every aspect of our lives.1

premise. My goal is to make visible how one aspect of white sensibility continues to hold racism in place: white fragility.

WE DON’T SEE OURSELVES IN RACIAL TERMS

My experience is not a universal human experience. It is a particularly white experience in a society in which race matters profoundly; a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race.

Yet a critical component of cross-racial skill building is the ability to sit with the discomfort of being seen racially, of having to proceed as if our race matters (which it does).

OUR OPINIONS ARE UNINFORMED