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

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the biggest challenges in addressing the problem of racism in the United States, post-Civil Rights era, is that many people in our society do not share a common language or vocabulary for articulating some of the even most basic life experiences that are impacted by the factor of race. We end up talking at each other, making assumptions about what the other side thinks without fully understanding where they are even coming from, because we mean very different things when talking about the same words.

The word "racism" itself is chief among those words. And this book does a great job of breaking down the definition of racism in a way that is clear and precise and meant to address what it actually means experientially, allbeit from the perspective of one white person to another.

For example, what people often miss when claiming that whites in this country are also experiencing racism today is, racism (in its original context dating pre-current day) is really about an imbalance in power dynamics at a systemic level.

White people are capable of experiencing racial prejudice on a personal/individual level, but they are not subject to racism at a systemic level because the people at the top of the racial hierarchy in America are (and historically have been, for generations) white. Look at the numbers of racial representation in positions of power in our government today. Look at the numbers of racial representation in wealthy vs impoverished neighborhoods, in high vs low performing schools, in mass incarceration.

I know there is a perceived sense of attacks on whiteness due to prevalent cultural attitudes in this country (i.e. "wokeness"). But as Jon Stewart once put it, cultural power in this country is not the same thing as actual power. Cultural power isn't what dictates how laws get passed and which forms of policing actually gets enforced. White people in this country collectively have always had more power just by sheer voting numbers, regardless of what actually passes as "popular."

Allow me to unpack some of my own personal racism with regards to this book:

- I was originally turned off by the title and almost didn't want to pick up this book (even though I'm not white.) I also had an unconscious assumption that the author was black until I read the first few pages.
- It wasn't until the term "White Fragility" came up in a recent conversation with a friend and I realized I didn't have an internalized definition of what it meant that I felt motivated to pick this up at a bookstore... and I felt uncomfortable letting others see me buy this at the store.
- Even while reading this book, I somehow felt the desire to hide the fact that I was reading it while in public places because I didn't want to be approached by white people asking questions about it.

I grew up in a majority white neighborhood where many of the attitudes described in this book were commonplace and accepted as normal. I even ended up espousing a lot of these attitudes myself, and distinctly remembered a moment while growing up where I realized one of my friends was expressing racist attitudes (involving other non-black races) and couldn't understand how they could have those thoughts in our totally post-racial society.

I, like many people, would like to believe that I am a good person. I would like to believe that I am open-minded and respectful of others in our society regardless of the color of their skin. I would like to think that I am not racist.

And yet at the same time, I am also responsible for contributing to and being complicit in the cycle of racism that persists in this country. I do so in the ways:

- I purposely avoid getting involved in conversations that mention race
- I choose to not even bring up the subject of race when it may actually be relevant in a discussion
- I exhibit fear/avoidance of white people who fit the very definition of the term in this book, and instead try to find ways to blend in with them
- I also exhibit the same fears that white people do when in non-majority white contexts (i.e. feeling unsafe in majority black neighborhoods)

I am not independent of the racist hierarchy and systems that exist in this country. I am capable of helping perpetuate them in my own ways.

This book is short, but it's provocative and often in ways that will make its target audience feel uncomfortable. But that's the whole point: you ought to feel uncomfortable about this subject. If you're in a position where you can afford to avoid feeling uncomfortable by simply avoiding the subject in the first place, then maybe consider that there are others in this country who don't have that same luxury.

I would also echo another friend's sentiments that we should be reading more books that come at this subject from non-white perspectives, but I'll leave that as a follow-up for next time.

(see worthwhile counterpoint to the book though)