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

★★★★

If your idea of talking about race involves statements like:

• "I don't see color, I see people." (p. 39)


• "I have lots of friends of color." (p. 43)


• "I judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin." (p. 43)

...then this book is for you. But also, if you are a white person who already sees how the above statements are problematic, then this book is still for you.

The author herself is white, and she explains early on that when she says "we", she means "white people". The book is very much geared towards white people, and she challenges her readers to truly do the really hard work of closely examining both the role of white people in society and institutions in general, and also how being white has shaped the reader's personal individual identity, even if sub-consciously.

DiAngelo pulls no punches. It's easy to see how a white reader might frequently feel uncomfortable, defensive, or even insulted. In her analysis of white fragility, she scrutinizes concepts such as white supremacy, white privilege, and white solidarity. She drops a lot of truths:

• "The simplistic idea that racism is limited to individual intentional acts committed by unkind people is at the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic. To move beyond defensiveness, we have to let go of this common belief." (p. 73)


• "If you believe that you are being told that you are a bad person, all your energy is likely to go toward denying this possibility and invalidating the messenger rather than trying to understand why what you've said or done is hurtful." (p. 76)


• "[White people] often organize our identity around a denial of our racially based privileges that reinforce racist disadvantages for others. What is particularly problematic about this contradiction is that white people's moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity with it." (p. 108)


• "White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism." (p. 112)

The goal is for the reader to understand that "[w]hen we move beyond the good/bad binary [of racism], we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others." (p. 129)

This book is full of eye-opening perspectives, but I rated it short of 5 stars because it might not be universally accessible. A reader must first and foremost be open to the ideas expressed in these pages. Beyond that, some of the content is more academic than conversational, and I personally found the information most approachable and relatable when DiAngelo illustrated ideas using actual examples from her personal life, experiences she witnessed in her workshops and classes, and current events.

If any of the above quotes make you feel uneasy - if you are already feeling a bit of white fragility! - then perhaps it's best to ease yourself into the study of whiteness by starting with an introduction to white fragility by reading an article about Robin DiAngelo coining the phrase:

https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/03/18/in-these-times-of-racial-strife-a-white-professor-explores-the-prevalence-of-white-fragility/

...and then watching a video of her speaking in an actual workshop:

https://youtu.be/Dv-pkNXcKsw

...and then picking up this book to get the full in-depth exploration.

As a person of color, I found this book useful as a way to help me better understand the patterned behaviors of many white people, which will hopefully allow me to have more productive conversations about race. I appreciated DiAngelo's statement that it "is white people's responsibility to be less fragile; people of color don't need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible." (p. 152) Moreover, for those of us who choose to engage in discussions about race, it may be helpful to "let go of changing the other person. If someone gains insight from what I share, that is wonderful... In the end, my actions are driven by my own need for integrity, not a need to correct or change someone else." (p. 151)