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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Author’s Note-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-11

Chapter 12

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

How White Resistance to Thinking and Talking About Race Leads to Complicity in Systemic Racism

White Fragility argues that white people in the United States are unprepared and unwilling to have honest conversations about race. Though this stems from historical and sociopolitical sources, it is important for white people to individually analyze and unlearn their socialization to have authentic conversations about race and racism. Unfortunately, many white people instead engage in a dynamic that DiAngelo calls the “refusal to know” (50): declining to participate in talks about racism because they can feel extremely uncomfortable.

White people resist talking about race and racism in many ways, all of which “maintain unequal racial power” (86). White people display this resistance by denying the existence of racism, denying their participation in the system of racism, remaining silent in conversations, or responding with anger or other strong emotions. These reactions reinforce racism, keep white people from “acknowledging their complicity” (108), and make it difficult for white people to have authentic relationships with people of color. DiAngelo writes, “[M]any people of color have told me that they initially tried to talk about racism with their white friends, but their friends got defensive or invalidated their experiences, so they stopped sharing their experiences” (81).

White people in the United States learn that their racial identity is unimportant. white supremacy and racism have functioned for so long and with such great success because “the dimensions of racism benefiting white people are usually invisible to whites” (28). This invisibility allows white people to benefit from white supremacy without acknowledging it. In addition, because white people do not think about their whiteness as an important aspect of their identity, they are highly likely to perceive themselves as individuals and their opinions as objective facts. DiAngelo consistently disrupts this narrative, arguing that it is important to talk “about race and racism in general terms such as white people [...] because it interrupts individualism” (89). One caveat she adds is that generalizing about racial categories is only useful about white people and not about people of color because whiteness is the dominant force of oppression in the United States.

When white people have to move beyond a sense of their own individuality, they see their own complicity in white supremacy. If they enter into conversations about race and racism in this new way, they have the freedom “to focus on how—rather than if—[their] racism is present” (129). If white people examine more critically the beliefs and behaviors impacted by racial socialization, they can grow.

Discomfort as a Trigger

White fragility is not an isolated phenomenon. Instead, it is the result of a disequilibrium, or disruption, in a white person’s sense of racial comfort. DiAngelo explains that “though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement” (2). White fragility exists because of white supremacy, and it serves to return “racial comfort” (2) to white people when they feel their dominance is threatened.

White people’s racial discomfort can happen in a range of situations: when a suggestion is made that a white person is “complicit in racism” (4), from an “interruption to the racially familiar” (103), or from “pointing out white advantage” (109). In these moments, white people receive an “unwelcome and insulting shock to the system” (4) that triggers “confusion, defensiveness, and righteous indignation” (109). White fragility protects the individual white person’s sense of self and reinforces the larger system of white supremacy. As soon as a person demonstrates white fragility, they right their disequilibrium, resuming their comfort in a racist system.

One of the most important reasons it is important for DiAngelo to identify that discomfort as the precursor to white fragility is because it illuminates an entry point for white people to address their internalized racism and sense of white superiority. Once a white person can be more aware that their discomfort triggers white fragility, they can track their own emotional responses and adjust their behaviors. DiAngelo spends a significant amount of time discussing this towards the conclusion of the text, arguing that white people can move into a healthier modality in conversations about race and racism if they are able to self-identify how they are feeling and respond in more appropriate ways in the moment.

Children’s Socialization in a Racist Society

DiAngelo contradicts common societal narratives about racism and children, reminding her audience that racism is socialized “since childhood” (90). Though many people claim that children do not see race or do not understand racism, several scholarly sources suggest that “even when race is not explicitly discussed, children internalize both implicit and explicit messages about it from their environment” (84). The reason adults are unaware how children understand race and racism is not because children are “less racially biased, but that they [learn] to hide their racism in front of adults” (85)—“a sense of white superiority and knowledge of racial power codes appear to develop as early as preschool” (108).

Children hear many messages about racism and develop an early awareness of racial codes and beliefs. This is critical to addressing whiteness and white supremacy. White adults are steeped in the beliefs that they don’t have to acknowledge their participation in racism and that they can deny participating in a racist system. By emphasizing the early learning that children do, DiAngelo successfully argues that white people have to analyze their socialization into whiteness from birth onwards.