Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

by Robin DiAngelo

As a white person who writes about race specifically to my fellow white people, I am not seeking to teach white people about Black people. I am seeking to teach white people about ourselves in relation to Black and other people of color.

do not believe that white people can fully understand racism and our role in it if we only listen to BIPOC people. We have much of our own personal and collective work to do, and it should not and cannot be the responsibility of people of color to get us to do it.

White people must understand how race shapes our own lives and how we are conditioned into complicity, regardless of awareness or intention.

the nature of implicit bias is that white people are more likely to be open to initial challenges to our racial positions, perspectives, and behaviors from a fellow white person.

For me, to be “less white” is to counter my socialization into whiteness; to be less racially oppressive, less racially ignorant and less arrogant in my ignorance, less defensive and silent and complicit. Racism perverts and distorts reality, and thus white people are generally granted more objectivity and legitimacy when speaking about racism, in spite of our lack of neutrality. To be less white is to use that entry point and work with other white people to interrupt racism.

the organizations that have recently stated they will capitalize “Black” but not white. “White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does,”

“white supremacy”

includes the multitude of ways our society elevates white people as the human ideal and norm for humanity and relegates everyone else as a particular kind of human, and always a lesser deviation from the white ideal.

racism can be thought of as the systemic outcome of white supremacist ideology.

“white progressive”

white people who see themselves as racially progressive,

white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom. . . . Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

lack of struggle as the indicator of racial justice. He notes that no racial progress has

ever been made without conflict.

“You want me to make an act of faith risking . . . my life . . . on some idealism which you assure me exists in America which I have never seen.”

assume good intentions, respect differences, speak for yourself. Whose interests do these guidelines serve? They serve white expectations for racial comfort: ensuring niceness and warding off direct challenges. In so doing, they are not accounting for the ever-present dynamics of power, assuming a universal (white) experience, and policing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) people into not engaging with authenticity lest they face the punitive power of white fragility.

the irony of believing that avoiding the conversation means that we are beyond the conversation.

on a daily basis, Black people don’t interact with those who openly agitate for white nationalism. Yet on a daily basis in the workplace, the classroom, houses of worship, gentrifying neighborhoods, and community groups, Black people do interact with white progressives. We are the ones—with a smile on our faces—who undermine Black people daily in ways both harder to identify and easier to deny. To the degree that we see ourselves as “not racist,” we are going to be very defensive about any suggestion to the contrary. We will see no further action needed because

we see ourselves as outside of the problem.

aversive racism, a term coined by psychologist Joel Kovel. Aversive racism is racism that is suppressed from awareness because it conflicts with a consciously held belief in racial equality.

allows the person to enact racism while maintaining a positive self-image (“I have lots of friends of color”).

“What are some of the ways in which your race(s) has shaped your life?”

If I can’t tell you what it means to be white, I will not be able to engage with an alternate experience—what it means not to be white. Not only will an alternate reality be incomprehensible to me, but I will need to refuse that reality because of what it reflects back and exposes about mine.

Black people know that most of us can’t answer the question of our own whiteness, and that we bring that inability to the table. Thus, they are likely to experience more punishment, not less, if they raise race issues. This is one of the great contradictions of white progressives. On the one hand, I would never want to say or do anything racially hurtful. But on the other, don’t you dare tell me I have said or done anything racially hurtful!

many organize their answers around racialized people, and most often a Black person. They tell a story about a childhood friend

it illustrates how difficult it is for us to see our own lives in racial terms. We can think about race only as it relates to racialized people.

Given that white people control virtually every institution in Western society, the lack of racial awareness that we bring to the institutional table infuses all aspects of society and profoundly impacts those who have few if any seats there. We will not organize to enact systemic change to a system we do not acknowledge.

the claim “I’m not racist,” professed by virtually every white person who has ever been caught on camera engaging in public acts of manifest racism, is functionally meaningless.

any white progressive you ask will claim to not be racist, consider the following questions for reflection: • Did you grow up in an integrated neighborhood? If so, do you still live in one? If not and you do now, is it due to gentrification? • If you did not grow up in an integrated neighborhood, why didn’t you? • If everyone is equal, how did you make sense of living separately? • Did your parents encourage you to visit the places where Black people lived in order to get to know them and build the relationships that were missing in your environment? • Did your parents have a significant number of Black friends themselves? • Did you attend integrated schools? If so, was your school considered to be “good”? • Did you study systemic racism in your K–12 education? If you graduated from college, did you study systemic racism there? • Was it integrated throughout your education by your professors, including your Black professors? Or were your professors overwhelmingly white? Did those white professors have to demonstrate that they were able to engage with issues of racism in the curriculum and classroom dynamics before they were considered qualified to teach? • Did you have to demonstrate that you had a foundational understanding of racism before you could graduate, or teach, manage people, or practice medicine or law? • If you were not educated about racism, have you sought every— or even any—opportunity to gain that education yourself? • Do you work in an organization in whic...

every inch of Black progress has been met with a white backlash.14 That backlash manifests on at least four primary levels: institutional, cultural, interpersonal, and individual.

“Allostatic load” refers to the wear and tear on the body, which accumulates as an individual is exposed to chronic stress. When this load is due to chronic racial stress, health researcher Arline Geronimus termed the consequences “racial weathering.”

radical relationality—liberatory action informed by the recognition that all living things are interconnected and do not exist independently—is foundational to ending racism.

Organizing for systemic change begins through relationships.

We won’t work toward systemic change if we don’t even recognize, much less acknowledge, that we play a role, one way or the other. That role either implicitly supports or explicitly challenges systemic racism; policies don’t write and enact themselves.

It wasn’t until 1998 that the Topeka Unified School District was granted unified status.

Laws are merely expressions of a society’s dominant beliefs.

Ibram X. Kendi tells us that the opposite of racist isn’t not racist; rather, it is anti-racist.19

understand his point to be that in a society in which racism is the default, to not be actively engaged in disrupting racism—at

the minimum—is to collude with the status...

critical awareness, continually educate ourselves, build cross-racial skills, develop the ability to respond constructively, and repair racial harm; these are also forms of anti-racism.

speaking about white people as a group who have a shared experience specifically as white people is a primary trigger for a white fragility meltdown on a number of levels.

Making statements about well-documented social patterns and outcomes

is not the same as stereotyping. Systemic racism is well documented throughout society and across history.

If prior to suffrage men had raised the objection that to say they were advantaged as a group was an unfair generalization (“Not all men!” “I don’t see you as a woman!” “Why can’t we all just be humans?”), then how could denying women the vote have been challenged? Who does it serve not to name the beneficiaries of unfair policies?

To pick up the story and show how the message of female inferiority continues in de facto forms today is simply to provide social analysis, not stereotype. For example, the complete text of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” In 2021, the ERA has still not been federally ratified.

The legitimacy of our institutions depends upon the concept that all citizens are equal. At the same time, we each occupy distinct

raced (and gendered, classed, etc.) positions that profoundly shape our life chances in ways that are not voluntary or random.

In order to manage this tension, we use the narrative of individualism, which posits that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of a systemic structure but of individual character. Individualism claims that success is independent of position, that one succeeds through individual effort a...

We all act independently of one another, and we all have the same possibility of achievement. Starting positions are irrelevant, and emphasizing their relevance actually limits one’s ability to stand on one’s own. Standing on one’s own is both the assumpt...

when white people insist on individualism in discussions about racism, they are saying, My race has not made a difference in my life, so why do we have to talk about race as if it mattered? It is talking about race as if it mattered that makes it matter. I don’t see myself as a member of a racial group, so you shouldn’t see me that way either. In fact, by saying that my group membership matters, you are generalizing. You can’t generalize about me because I am an individual; therefore, unless you know me, you can’t profess to know anything about my life. Nor are you aware of all the ways I am an exception within my society. Further, as an individual, I am objective and view others as individuals and not as members of racial groups. For example, if I were hiring, I would hire the best person for the job no matter what their race was.