This is what is known as “white fragility”: White people in North American society enjoy environments insulated from racial disadvantages, which fosters an expectation among white people of racial comfort while lowering their ability to tolerate racial stress. In our research, we saw that white fragility prevented people from confronting their latent prejudices. This cognitive dissonance also meant that subjects would often amplify their responses expressing positive statements toward minorities in an effort to satiate their self-concept of “not being racist.”
