Share your Thoughts on White Fragility!

[Hannah]

I second everything you said, Nay. I didn't want to read this book because I thought I was probably woke enough, but I'm so glad I did and I learned so much.

My three biggest takeaways were:

1. Race is a social construct, just like gender. Of course I don't question that gender is a social construct, but it never occurred to me to think about race the same way. That was really eye-opening.

2. Racism isn't what people do, it's the system that's in place. We all participate in racism because that's how it works, and that's why it's so hard (and important) to interrupt racism. But viewing individual racist actions as part of the larger system of racism changes how we talk about racism.

3. White people redefined "racist" to mean "bad person"/"racism" to mean "something bad people do," and that protects us from having to own our own participation in racism. It makes me think we shouldn't teach kids that "racism is only something bad people do" but instead "racism is something we all work together to break."