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

by Robin DiAngelo

Nor does it move back and forth,

The direction of power between white people and people of color is historic, traditional, and normalized in ideology. Racism differs from individual racial prejudice and racial discrimination in the historical accumulation and ongoing use of institutional power and authority to support the prejudice a...

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...

conte...

laws, policies, practices, and norms of society

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.

US Census Bureau, the United Nations, academic groups such as the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Metropolis Project, and nonprofits such as the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League.

15

bir...

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It now becomes clear that a network of systematically related barriers surrounds the bird.

The birdcage metaphor helps us understand why racism can be so hard to see and recognize: we have a limited view.

single situations,

exceptions, and anecdotal evidence for our understanding, rather than on broader, interlocking patterns.

the patterns are consistent and wel...

David Wellman succinctly summarizes racism as “a system of advantage based on race.”17

white privilege,

a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by ...

does not mean that individual white people do not struggle or face barriers. It does mean that we do not face the particular barriers of racism.

By definition, racism is a deeply embedded historical system of institutional power. It is not fluid and does not change direction simply because a few individuals of color manage to excel.

WHITENESS AS A POSITION OF STATUS

Being perceived as white carries more than a mere racial classification; it is a social and institutional status and identity imbued with legal, political, economic, and social ...

“whiteness as property.”

Harris’s analysis is useful because it shows how identity and perceptions of identity can grant or deny resources.

Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm.

the white reference point is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone.

These writers urged white people to turn their attention onto themselves to explore what it means to be white in a society that is so divided by race.

“There isn’t any Negro problem; there is only a white problem.”20

Yet the idea that racism in the United States can operate outside white people is reinforced through celebrations such as Black History Month, in which we study the Civil War and civil rights eras as if they occurred separately from all US history.

there are specific ways that the achievements of people of color are separated from the overall social context and depoliticized, for instance, in stories we tell about black cultural heroes.

Jackie Ro...

The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level.

“Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”

Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy.

(although we also need to acknowledge that in the case of the desegregation of baseball, there was an economic incentive for these allies).

White history is implied in the absence of its acknowledgment; white history is the norm for history.

our need to qualify that we are speaking about black history or women’s history suggests that these contributions lie outside the norm.

To say that whiteness is a location of structural advantage is to recognize that to be white is to be in a privileged position within society and its institutions—to be seen as an insider and to be granted the benefits of belonging.

Whites control all major institutions of society and set the policies and practices that others must live

they support the status quo and do not challenge racism in any way significant enough to be threatening.

To say that whiteness is a standpoint is to say that a significant aspect of white identity is to see oneself as an individual, outside or innocent of race—“just human.”

This standpoint views white people and their interests as central to, and representative of, humanity.

dominant narratives of so...

individualism and merit...

These narratives allow us to congratulate ourselves on our success within the institutions of society and blame o...

to understand racism as a network of norms and actions that consistently create advantage for whites and disadvantage for people of color.

The dimensions of racism benefiting white people are usually invisible to whites.

We are unaware of, or do not acknowledge, the meaning of race and its impact on our own lives.

Thus we do not recognize or admit to white privilege and the norms that p...

WHITE SUPREMACY