logo

80 pages 2 hours read

Robin DiAngelo

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Essay Topics

1.

In a personal essay, relate your own experience with white supremacy and racism to DiAngelo’s ideas.

2.

White Fragility uses a wide range of citations and examples, focusing primarily on sociology. Using some of the secondary or primary evidence from the text, analyze DiAngelo’s theory of white fragility.

3.

Almost every chapter of the book begins with an epigraph that describes an interaction between people. Explore how these epigraphs relate to the individual chapters and book as a whole. What function do they serve? Are they effective in serving that purpose?

4.

Why does DiAngelo introduce her theory of white fragility late in the text? How does this structure support or undermine her arguments?

5.

What is the purpose of DiAngelo’s Author’s Note? How does it relate to the text as a whole?

6.

DiAngelo describes a number of assumptions that undergird white fragility. Choose several and examine their origins in American history. How did these assumptions come to be? How have they persisted in American society?

7.

Analyze several scenes from a film or television show that portrays white people in the United States. How do the characters demonstrate DiAngelo’s theory of white fragility?

8.

Analyze the good/bad binary that arose after the civil rights movement and its presence in current culture. In what ways can we see the good/bad binary in popular media or news?

9.

DiAngelo includes class and gender analyses in her discussion of white racial identity. Choose one of these (class or gender) and explore how it relates to white fragility.

10.

DiAngelo provides many suggestions for white people who would like to unlearn their own white fragility. Describe several of these suggestions and provide your own interpretations of how people could carry out these practices in day-to-day life.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text