The first assignment (Reflection paper writing Guidelines:
A reflective writing paper describes your intellectual and emotional reaction to topics presented
in the required readings. Do not give me a synopsis of the material.
1- The title page should reflect APA Publication manual standards. The reflective writing
paper should be four pages in length. Please put on the reflection papers your name, date
and the number. The paper should be four pages ( title page, two pages of narrative,
and references)
2-
The paper should indicate that you have thought critically (intellectual reaction/s)
about whether the material (readings, lectures, videotapes, experiential exercises, etc) has
helped you to identify and challenge some of your attitudes, Values, beliefs and
prejudices about people who may have different social identities. In PARTICULAR,
DESCRIBE HOW THE MATERIAL EXPANDS oppression functions in contemporary
society.
3-The paper also should describe any affective response(s)) emotional reaction/s) that you
may experience as a result of being exposed to any of the material may or may not have on
your current, attitudes, Values, beliefs, prejudices and you social work practice.
Important note:
1- Do the reflection from the chapter 7. I will send you the book as PDF.
2- Please keep it simple English but still in academic writing level because my professor
knows my English is the second language.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Author’s Note
Introduction: We Can’t Get There from Here
1. The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
2. Racism and White Supremacy
3. Racism After the Civil Rights Movement
4. How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
5. The Good/Bad Binary
6. Anti-Blackness
7. Racial Triggers for White People
8. The Result: White Fragility
9. White Fragility in Action
10. White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
11. White Women’s Tears
12. Where Do We Go from Here?
Resources for Continuing Education
Acknowledgments
Notes
Copyright
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Guide
Cover
Copyright
Contents
1 The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
PRAISE FOR WHITE FRAGILITY
“White Fragility is a rare and incisive examination of the system of whitebody supremacy, which binds us all as Americans. Robin DiAngelo
explicates the underlying Western ideologies of individualism and
presumed objectivity that tighten those bonds. But she doesn’t just analyze
this system. With authenticity and clarity, she provides the antidote to white
fragility and a road map for developing white racial stamina and humility.
White Fragility loosens the bonds of white supremacy and binds us back
together as human beings.”
—RESMAA MENAKEM,
author of My Grandmother’s Hands and Rock the Boat
“What an amazingly powerful book Robin DiAngelo has written! This
remarkable book encourages folks to embrace a more deeply nuanced
exploration of white culture and dominance and, as such, will be a great
contribution in promoting the necessary policy change and healing that this
country requires. Dr. DiAngelo’s work in deconstructing whiteness is not
only brilliant, it is written in a way that is crystal clear and accessible to
each and every reader. While this is a powerful scholarly analysis of white
fragility, it is also an invitation to engage in deep personal inquiry and
collective change. As a woman of color, I find hope in this book because of
its potential to disrupt the patterns and relationships that have emerged out
of long-standing colonial principles and beliefs. White Fragility is an
essential tool toward authentic dialogue and action. May it be so!”
—SHAKTI BUTLER,
president of World Trust and director of Mirrors of Privilege: Making
Whiteness Visible
“As powerful forces of white racism again swell, DiAngelo invites white
progressives to have a courageous conversation about their culture of
complicity. To eradicate racism, she encourages white people to relinquish
ingrained hyper-attachment to individualism and embrace predictable
patterns of their own racial group. White Fragility provides important
antiracist understanding and essential strategies for well-intentioned white
people who truly endeavor to be a part of the solution.”
—GLENN E. SINGLETON,
author of Courageous Conversations About Race
“White fragility is the secret ingredient that makes racial conversations so
difficult and achieving racial equity even harder. But by exposing it and
showing us all—including white folks—how it operates and how it hurts us,
individually and collectively, Robin DiAngelo has performed an invaluable
service. An indispensable volume for understanding one of the most
important (and yet rarely appreciated) barriers to achieving racial justice.”
—TIM WISE,
author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
“In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo demonstrates an all-too-rare ability to
enter the racial conversation with complexity, nuance, and deep respect. Her
writing establishes her mastery in accessing the imaginal, metaphoric mind,
where the possibility for transformation resides. With an unwavering
conviction that change is possible, her message is clear: the incentive for
white engagement in racial justice work is ultimately self-liberation.”
—LETICIA NIETO,
coauthor of Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental
Strategy to Liberate Everyone
These ceremonials in honor of white supremacy,
performed from babyhood, slip from the
conscious mind down deep into muscles . . .
and become difficult to tear out.
—LILLIAN SMITH, Killers of the Dream (1949)
CONTENTS
Foreword by Michael Eric Dyson
Author’s Note
Introduction: We Can’t Get There from Here
1 The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
2 Racism and White Supremacy
3 Racism After the Civil Rights Movement
4 How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
5 The Good/Bad Binary
6 Anti-Blackness
7 Racial Triggers for White People
8 The Result: White Fragility
9 White Fragility in Action
10 White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
11 White Women’s Tears
12 Where Do We Go from Here?
Resources for Continuing Education
Acknowledgments
Notes
FOREWORD
Keyser Söze, Beyoncé,
and the Witness Protection Program
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
One metaphor for race, and racism, won’t do. They are, after all,
exceedingly complicated forces. No, we need many metaphors, working in
concert, even if in different areas of the culture through a clever division of
linguistic labor. Race is a condition. A disease. A card. A plague. Original
sin. For much of American history, race has been black culture’s issue;
racism, a black person’s burden. Or substitute any person of color for black
and you’ve got the same problem. Whiteness, however, has remained
constant. In the equation of race, another metaphor for race beckons;
whiteness is the unchanging variable. Or, to shift metaphors, whiteness has
been, to pinch Amiri Baraka’s resonant phrase, the “changing same,” a
highly adaptable and fluid force that stays on top no matter where it lands.
In a sense, whiteness is at once the means of dominance, the end to which
dominance points, and the point of dominance, too, which, in its purest
form, in its greatest fantasy, never ends.
To be sure, like the rest of race, whiteness is a fiction, what in the jargon
of the academy is termed a social construct, an agreed-on myth that has
empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence. But whiteness goes even
one better: it is a category of identity that is most useful when its very
existence is denied. That’s its twisted genius. Whiteness embodies Charles
Baudelaire’s admonition that “the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade
you that he does not exist.” Or, as an alter ego of the character Keyser Söze
says in the film The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever
played was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.” The Devil. Racism.
Another metaphor. Same difference.
Robin DiAngelo is here to announce, in the words of evangelicals—and
rappers Rick Ross and Jay-Z—“The Devil Is a Lie.” Whiteness, like race,
may not be true—it’s not a biologically heritable characteristic that has
roots in physiological structures or in genes or chromosomes. But it is real,
in the sense that societies and rights and goods and resources and privileges
have been built on its foundation. DiAngelo brilliantly names a whiteness
that doesn’t want to be named, disrobes a whiteness that dresses in
camouflage as humanity, unmasks a whiteness costumed as American, and
fetches to center stage a whiteness that would rather hide in visible
invisibility.
It is not enough to be a rhetorician and a semiotician to deconstruct and
demythologize whiteness. One must be a magician of the political and the
social, an alchemist of the spiritual and psychological too. One must wave
off racist stereotypes and conjure a rich history of combatting white
supremacy and white privilege and white lies—a history that has often been
buried deep in the dark, rich, black American soil. DiAngelo knows that
what she is saying to white folk in this book is what so many black folks
have thought and believed and said over the years but couldn’t be heard
because white ears were too sensitive, white souls too fragile.
DiAngelo joins the front ranks of white antiracist thinkers with a stirring
call to conscience and, most important, consciousness in her white brothers
and sisters. White fragility is a truly generative idea; it is a crucial concept
that inspires us to think more deeply about how white folk understand their
whiteness and react defensively to being called to account for how that
whiteness has gone under the radar of race for far too long. DiAngelo is
wise and withering in her relentless assault on what Langston Hughes
termed “the ways of white folks.” But she is clear-eyed and unsentimental
in untangling the intertwined threads of social destiny and political
prescription that bind white identity to moral neutrality and cultural
universality.
DiAngelo bravely challenges the collapse of whiteness into national
identity. No less an authority than Beyoncé Knowles recently remarked,
“It’s been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism,
some assume we’re protesting America.” DiAngelo proves that Beyoncé is
right, that the flow of white identity into American identity—of racist
beliefs into national beliefs—must be met head-on with a full-throated
insistence that what it means to be American is not what it means to be
white, at least not exclusively, or even primarily. This nation is far more
complicated in its collective self-understanding. DiAngelo, in a masterly
way, takes apart the notion that identity politics is a scourge, at least when it
involves people of color or women. She blows down the house of white
racial cards built on the premise that it can, or should, rest on something
beyond identity politics.
DiAngelo forces us to see that all politics have rested on identities, and
that those identities are critical features of wrestling with how we have gone
wrong in the effort to set things right—which too often has meant make
them white. We cannot possibly name the nemeses of democracy or truth or
justice or equality if we cannot name the identities to which they have been
attached. For most of our history, straight white men have been involved in
a witness protection program that guards their identities and absolves them
of their crimes while offering them a future free of past encumbrances and
sins.
Robin DiAngelo is the new racial sheriff in town. She is bringing a
different law and order to bear upon the racial proceedings. Instead of
covering up for a whiteness that refused to face up to its benefits and
advantages, its errors and faults, she has sought to uphold the humanity of
the unjustly maligned while exposing the offenses of the undeservedly
celebrated.
White fragility is an idea whose time has come. It is an idea that registers
the hurt feelings, shattered egos, fraught spirits, vexed bodies, and taxed
emotions of white folk. In truth, their suffering comes from recognizing that
they are white—that their whiteness has given them a big leg up in life
while crushing others’ dreams, that their whiteness is the clearest example
of the identity politics they claim is harmful to the nation, and that their
whiteness has shielded them from growing up as quickly as they might have
done had they not so heavily leaned on it to make it through life. White
Fragility is a vital, necessary, and beautiful book, a bracing call to white
folk everywhere to see their whiteness for what it is and to seize the
opportunity to make things better now. Robin DiAngelo kicks all the
crutches to the side and demands that white folk finally mature and face the
world they’ve made while seeking to help remake it for those who have
neither their privilege nor their protection.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
IDENTITY POLITICS
The United States was founded on the principle that all people are created
equal. Yet the nation began with the attempted genocide of Indigenous
people and the theft of their land. American wealth was built on the labor of
kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants. Women were
denied the right to vote until 1920, and black women were denied access to
that right until 1964. The term identity politics refers to the focus on the
barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality. We have yet to
achieve our founding principle, but any gains we have made thus far have
come through identity politics.
The identities of those sitting at the tables of power in this country have
remained remarkably similar: white, male, middle- and upper-class, ablebodied. Acknowledging this fact may be dismissed as political correctness,
but it is still a fact. The decisions made at those tables affect the lives of
those not at the tables. Exclusion by those at the table doesn’t depend on
willful intent; we don’t have to intend to exclude for the results of our
actions to be exclusion. While implicit bias is always at play because all
humans have bias, inequity can occur simply through homogeneity; if I am
not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be
motivated to remove them. Nor will I be motivated to remove the barriers if
they provide an advantage to which I feel entitled.
All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been
accomplished through identity politics: women’s suffrage, the American
with Disabilities Act, Title 9, federal recognition of same-sex marriage. A
key issue in the 2016 presidential election was the white working class.
These are all manifestations of identity politics.
Take women’s suffrage. If being a woman denies you the right to vote,
you ipso facto cannot grant it to yourself. And you certainly cannot vote for
your right to vote. If men control all the mechanisms that exclude women
from voting as well as the mechanisms that can reverse that exclusion,
women must call on men for justice. You could not have had a conversation
about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming
women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those
who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the
controlling group is universal. For example, although we are taught that
women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white
women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it.
Not until the 1960s, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women—
regardless of race—granted full access to suffrage. Naming who has access
and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice.
This book is unapologetically rooted in identity politics. I am white and am
addressing a common white dynamic. I am mainly writing to a white
audience; when I use the terms us and we, I am referring to the white
collective. This usage may be jarring to white readers because we are so
rarely asked to think about ourselves or fellow whites in racial terms. But
rather than retreat in the face of that discomfort, we can practice building
our stamina for the critical examination of white identity—a necessary
antidote to white fragility. This raises another issue rooted in identity
politics: in speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am
yet again centering white people and the white voice. I have not found a
way around this dilemma, for as an insider I can speak to the white
experience in ways that may be harder to deny. So, though I am centering
the white voice, I am also using my insider status to challenge racism. To
not use my position this way is to uphold racism, and that is unacceptable; it
is a “both/and” that I must live with. I would never suggest that mine is the
only voice that should be heard, only that it is one of the many pieces
needed to solve the overall puzzle.
People who do not identify as white may also find this book helpful for
understanding why it is so often difficult to talk to white people about
racism. People of color cannot avoid understanding white consciousness to
some degree if they are to be successful in this society, yet nothing in
dominant culture affirms their understanding or validates their frustrations
when they interact with white people. I hope that this exploration affirms
the cross-racial experiences of people of color and provides some useful
insight.
This book looks at the United States and the general context of the West
(United States, Canada, and Europe). It does not address nuances and
variations within other sociopolitical settings. However, these patterns have
also been observed in white people in other white settler societies such as
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
WHAT ABOUT MULTIRACIAL PEOPLE?
Throughout this book, I argue that racism is deeply complex and nuanced,
and given this, we can never consider our learning to be complete or
finished. One example of this complexity is in the very use of the racial
categories “white” and “people of color.” I use the terms white and people
of color to indicate the two macro-level, socially recognized divisions of the
racial hierarchy. Yet in using these terms, I am collapsing a great deal of
variation. And though I believe (for reasons explained in chapter 1) that
temporarily suspending individuality to focus on group identity is healthy
for white people, doing so has very different impacts on people of color. For
multiracial people in particular, these binary categories leave them in a
frustrating “middle.”
Multiracial people, because they challenge racial constructs and
boundaries, face unique challenges in a society in which racial categories
have profound meaning. The dominant society will assign them the racial
identity they most physically resemble, but their own internal racial identity
may not align with the assigned identity. For example, though the musician
Bob Marley was multiracial, society perceived him as black and thus
responded to him as if he were black. When multiracial people’s racial
identity is ambiguous, they will face constant pressure to explain
themselves and “choose a side.” Racial identity for multiracial people is
further complicated by the racial identity of their parents and the racial
demographics of the community in which they are raised. For example,
though a child may look black and be treated as black, she may be raised
primarily by a white parent and thus identify more strongly as white.
The dynamics of what is termed “passing”—being perceived as white—
will also shape a multiracial person’s identity, as passing will grant him or
her society’s rewards of whiteness. However, people of mixed racial
heritage who pass as white may also experience resentment and isolation
from people of color who cannot pass. Multiracial people may not be seen
as “real” people of color or “real” whites. (It is worth noting that though the
term “passing” refers to the ability to blend in as a white person, there is no
corresponding term for the ability to pass as a person of color. This
highlights the fact that, in a racist society, the desired direction is always
toward whiteness and away from being perceived as a person of color.)
I will not be able to do justice to the complexity of multiracial identity.
But for the purposes of grappling with white fragility, I offer multiracial
people the concept of saliency. We all occupy multiple and intersecting
social positionalities. I am white, but I am also a cisgender woman, ablebodied, and middle-aged. These identities don’t cancel out one another;
each is more or less salient in different contexts. For example, in a group in
which I am the only woman, gender will likely be very salient for me.
When I am in a group that is all white except for one person of color, race
will likely be my most salient identity. As you read, it will be for you to
decide what speaks to your experience and what doesn’t, and in what
contexts. My hope is that you may gain insight into why people who
identify as white are so difficult in conversations regarding race and/or gain
insight into your own racial responses as you navigate the roiling racial
waters of daily life.
INTRODUCTION
WE CAN’T GET
THERE FROM HERE
I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a
group of white people seated in front of us. We are in their workplace and
have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race.
The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just
presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that
whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man
is pounding his fist on the table. As he pounds, he yells, “A white person
can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see forty employees,
thirty-eight of whom are white. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he
being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why doesn’t he notice the
effect this outburst is having on the few people of color in the room? Why
are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or
tuning out? I have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism.
White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and
unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation
and inequality. As a result, we are insulated from racial stress, at the same
time that we come to feel entitled to and deserving of our advantage. Given
how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we
haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized
sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to
ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We
consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very
identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect
us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The
smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable—the mere suggestion that
being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses.
These include emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as
argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.
These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the
challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the
racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility. Though
white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of
superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it
is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white
advantage.
Summarizing the familiar patterns of white people’s responses to racial
discomfort as white fragility has resonated for many people. The sensibility
is so familiar because whereas our personal narratives vary, we are all
swimming in the same racial water. For me, the recognition has come
through my work. I have a rare job; on a daily basis I lead primarily white
audiences in discussions of race, something many of us avoid at all costs.
In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer,
I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people
became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way.
The very idea that they would be required to attend a workshop on racism
outraged them. They entered the room angry and made that feeling clear to
us throughout the day as they slammed their notebooks down on the table,
refused to participate in exercises, and argued against any and all points.
I couldn’t understand their resentment or disinterest in learning more
about such a complex social dynamic as racism. These reactions were
especially perplexing when there were few or no people of color in their
workplace, and they had the opportunity to learn from my cofacilitators of
color. I assumed that in these circumstances, an educational workshop on
racism would be appreciated. After all, didn’t the lack of diversity indicate a
problem or at least suggest that some perspectives were missing? Or that
the participants might be undereducated about race because of scant crossracial interactions?
It took me several years to see beneath these reactions. At first I was
intimidated by them, and they held me back and kept me careful and quiet.
But over time, I began to see what lay beneath this anger and resistance to
discuss race or listen to people of color. I observed consistent responses
from a variety of participants. For example, many white participants who
lived in white suburban neighborhoods and had no sustained relationships
with people of color were absolutely certain that they held no racial
prejudice or animosity. Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a
matter of nice people versus mean people. Most appeared to believe that
racism ended in 1865 with the end of slavery. There was both knee-jerk
defensiveness about any suggestion that being white had meaning and a
refusal to acknowledge any advantage to being white. Many participants
claimed white people were now the oppressed group, and they deeply
resented anything perceived to be a form of affirmative action. These
responses were so predictable—so consistent and reliable—I was able to
stop taking the resistance personally, get past my own conflict avoidance,
and reflect on what was behind them.
I began to see what I think of as the pillars of whiteness—the
unexamined beliefs that prop up our racial responses. I could see the power
of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism
allowed white people to exempt themselves from the forces of socialization.
I could see how we are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts
committed by individual people, rather than as a complex, interconnected
system. And in light of so many white expressions of resentment toward
people of color, I realized that we see ourselves as entitled to, and deserving
of, more than people of color deserve; I saw our investment in a system that
serves us. I also saw how hard we worked to deny all this and how
defensive we became when these dynamics were named. In turn, I saw how
our defensiveness maintained the racial status quo.
Personal reflections on my own racism, a more critical view of media and
other aspects of culture, and exposure to the perspectives of many brilliant
and patient mentors of color all helped me to see how these pillars of racism
worked. It became clear that if I believed that only bad people who intended
to hurt others because of race could ever do so, I would respond with
outrage to any suggestion that I was involved in racism. Of course that
belief would make me feel falsely accused of something terrible, and of
course I would want to defend my character (and I had certainly had many
of my own moments of responding in just those ways to reflect on). I came
to see that the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually
impossible for white people to understand it. Given our racial insulation,
coupled with misinformation, any suggestion that we are complicit in
racism is a kind of unwelcome and insulting shock to the system.
If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized,
I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to
support my learning and growth. One of the greatest social fears for a white
person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially
problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have just done such a
thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we
are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and
denial. Such moments can be experienced as something valuable, even if
temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that
it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial
assumptions and behaviors.
None of the white people whose actions I describe in this book would
identify as racist. In fact, they would most likely identify as racially
progressive and vehemently deny any complicity with racism. Yet all their
responses illustrate white fragility and how it holds racism in place. These
responses spur the daily frustrations and indignities people of color endure
from white people who see themselves as open-minded and thus not racist.
This book is intended for us, for white progressives who so often—despite
our conscious intentions—make life so difficult for people of color. I
believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of
color. I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she
is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir,” or already “gets it.” White
progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the
degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making
sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into
what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing selfawareness, continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist
practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but
our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us
how we do so.
Racism has been among the most complex social dilemmas since the
founding of this country. While there is no biological race as we understand
it (see chapter 2), race as a social construct has profound significance and
shapes every aspect of our lives.1 Race will influence whether we will
survive our birth, where we are most likely to live, which schools we will
attend, who our friends and partners will be, what careers we will have,
how much money we will earn, how healthy we will be, and even how long
we can expect to live.2 This book does not attempt to provide the solution to
racism. Nor does it attempt to prove that racism exists; I start from that
premise. My goal is to make visible how one aspect of white sensibility
continues to hold racism in place: white fragility.
I will explain the phenomenon of white fragility, how we develop it, how
it protects racial inequality, and what we might do about it.
CHAPTER 1
THE CHALLENGES OF TALKING TO WHITE
PEOPLE ABOUT RACISM
WE DON’T SEE OURSELVES IN RACIAL TERMS
I am a white American raised in the United States. I have a white frame of
reference and a white worldview, and I move through the world with a
white experience. My experience is not a universal human experience. It is
a particularly white experience in a society in which race matters
profoundly; a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. However,
like most white people raised in the US, I was not taught to see myself in
racial terms and certainly not to draw attention to my race or to behave as if
it mattered in any way. Of course, I was made aware that somebody’s race
mattered, and if race w