Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

by Robin DiAngelo

Individualism is a very effective form of denial. If we insist that group membership is insignificant, social inequity and its consequences become personally irrelevant. So too does any imperative to change inequity. Insisting that each white person is different from every other white person (“do you have to keep saying ‘white’?”) enables us to distance ourselves from the actions of other white people. Since we aren’t responsible for the actions of other white people, we aren’t responsible for challenging their racism. This leaves racialized people to deal with the issue. Yet racialized people are often dismissed in a range of ways: accused of playing the race card, of having a chip on their shoulder, of seeing race in everything, and of being oversensitive or angry. When white people break with racial solidarity and speak up to challenge racism, it is also difficult for us and rife with social risks, yet white people are still seen as more credible, more objective, and the resistance is less painful for us because speaking up doesn’t bring up a lifetime of racial invalidation. This gives us a particular entry point in challenging our fellow white people, and we should use that entry point to do so.