White Fragility

Many people learn that there are biological and genetic differences between races, which makes it easy to believe that many societal divisions are natural. However, race is actually socially constructed. Differences in eye color and skin color are superficial and emerged as adaptations to geography. It is important to understand how race became conceptualized as a biological difference and then how society organized along those racial lines.

When the United States was formed, freedom and equality were held up as noble ideologies. But at the same time, the U.S. economy was based on African people’s enslavement and Indigenous people’s displacement and genocide. This tension between these ideals and the cruel reality had to be reconciled, and Thomas Jefferson suggested that there were natural differences between the races. If science could prove Black and Indigenous people were inherently inferior, then these cruel actions could be justified.

In less than a century, Jefferson’s suggestion of racial difference was taken as fact. The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment, and then it was further used to reinforce that unequal treatment. Historian Ibram X. Kendi argues that if people truly believe all humans are equal, disparity in condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination.

The term “white” did not appear in colonial law until the late 1600s. After slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, establishing whiteness became important as a means of legalized discrimination against other races. To have full U.S. citizenship, a person had to be classified as white, and so various groups petitioned to be reclassified as white. Armenians won reclassification in courts as “Caucasian,” but Japanese people did not earn the same distinction. The courts’ opinions essentially stated that white people got to decide who was white.

Over time, different ethnic groups were reclassified. Irish, Italian, and Polish people have previously been excluded from being white. These groups largely became racially united through assimilation (e.g., speaking English and eating “American” foods). This also reinforced the perception that Americans were white. In addition, people who “look white” are largely treated as white in society and gain certain advantages from that status.

In addition, poor and working-class people were not always perceived as fully white but were eventually granted full entry into whiteness to exploit labor. Racial divisions have kept working classes from organizing against the upper class, as the white working class often focuses more grievances on other racial groups than on the white elite, who control economic policy. But even though working-class white people experience classism, they don’t also experience racism. DiAngelo grew up in poverty, but she always knew that it was “better to be white.”

Racism is different from prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice consists of biased thoughts, feelings, and stereotypes of groups of people. All people have prejudice, and these prejudices are largely shared because people in the same culture absorb the same messages. Yet the prevailing belief that prejudice is bad causes problems, because suggesting that white people have racial prejudice is like saying that they are bad people. Hearing this, white people then feel the need to defend their character rather than explore and challenge their prejudices. Discrimination is action based on prejudice, like exclusion, threats, slander, and violence, or mild unease from being around certain groups of people.

When a racial group’s collective prejudice has legal authority and institutional control, it becomes racism—a structure that reaches far beyond individual people. Yet many people in the United States rationalize racial hierarchies as the outcome of a natural order resulting from genetics, individual effort, or talent. Those who don’t succeed are “not as naturally capable, deserving, or hardworking.” These beliefs obscure racism as a system of inequality that disadvantages groups of people.

Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of the United States, and white people have always had more power than people of color. People of color may hold prejudice and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms prejudice into racism. White people, on the other hand, hold power to infuse racial prejudice into laws, practices, and societal norms. So, for example,  while a person of color can refuse to wait on a white person in a restaurant, people of color cannot pass legislation to prohibit white people from buying a home in a certain neighborhood.

Many white people see racism as a thing of the past, but racial disparities continue in every institution. Scholar Marilyn Frye uses the metaphor of a birdcage to describe forces of oppression. Standing close to a birdcage makes it difficult to see all of the bars, and a person might not understand why the bird doesn’t just go around the one or two wires they can see and fly away. But stepping back, a person can see how the barriers interlock and thoroughly restrict the bird. Like the person observing the birdcage, white people have a very limited view of racism, and as such, they rely on single situations, anecdotes, and exceptions rather than understanding the interlocking patterns and barriers that exist in the world.

Being perceived as white has privileges that are denied to others. It is not that white people can’t face other kinds of discrimination, but that they don’t face racism. DiAngelo stresses that it’s important to understand how white people gain advantages as a result of a racism. Society views white people as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm. Whiteness is rarely acknowledged by white people as a quality that can have an impact on one’s life and perceptions.

Even racism is often described as a problem for people of color rather than the responsibility of white people. For example, Jackie Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American person to break the color line in sports. Yet talking about him in this way suggests that Robinson was the first Black person who finally had what it took to play with white athletes, as if no other Black athlete could do so. DiAngelo asks readers to imagine if instead people described him as “the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version highlights white people’s institutional control and racism, rather than implying that Robinson was able to play with white people due to his merits and exceptionality, and no other Black player had the same skill.

Because white people are viewed as the norm, they are seen as insiders and granted the advantage of belonging. White people control all of society’s major institutions and set policies and practices that others live by. They also reinforce the dominant narratives of society, like individualism and meritocracy, and use these narratives to explain the positions of other racial groups. In addition, white people often do not recognize or admit to white privilege and the norms that give them advantages. As a result, naming white people as a group with advantage often triggers white fragility.

Most people associate white supremacy with white people beating Black people at lunch counters or bombing Black churches during the civil rights movement, or white nationalists in 2017 marching with torches in Virginia to protest the removal of Confederate war memorials. But broadly, white supremacy is a term that captures white people’s assumed centrality and superiority, and the practices that result from this assumption. It refers not to individual people or acts, but to the overarching political, economic, and social system of white people’s domination.

White supremacy goes largely unnamed as a political system, which is one of the reasons it becomes so powerful. The failure to acknowledge its existence helps to hold it in place. For example, in 2016–2017 in the United States, the richest people, the most powerful politicians, teachers, and media producers were all groups that were 85 to 100 percent white. These statistics show how powerful white people are across society. In practice, for example, white media producers disseminate representations of other people that are extremely narrow and problematic.

Resistance to the term white supremacy prevents people from examining how these messages shape society. Even white supremacists distanced themselves from the term, using “alt-right” and “white nationalist” instead to spread their message and make it more palatable. Derek Black, a former leader in the white nationalist movement, explains that people can talk about shutting down immigration and fighting affirmative action as long as they don’t get outed as a white nationalist. Naming white supremacy is important because it makes the system visible and also highlights that it’s white people, not people of color, who bear the responsibility of changing it.

Sociologist Joe Feagin coined the term “white racial frame” to describe how white people circulate and reinforce messages that white people are superior in culture and achievement while also perpetuating negative stereotypes and images of people of color. This happens through movies, television, news, stories, and jokes. These messages are also reinforced by the fact that social institutions (particularly privileged institutions) are controlled by white people, and so white dominance is taken for granted.

DiAngelo asks white readers to imagine their earliest recollections of people of other races. She asks white people to consider if their parents told them that race didn’t matter, and then if they lived around or interacted with people of color. If they didn’t, what associations did readers have with neighborhoods and schools with people of color? Did they have any teachers of color? How did they know which schools were “better”?

Geography varies greatly by race, even if segregation is no longer encoded into laws. As such, children have to make sense of the incongruity between the claim that everyone is equal and the reality of segregation. DiAngelo asks readers to consider how people talk about white neighborhoods (good, safe, sheltered, clean, desirable) versus nonwhite neighborhoods (bad, dangerous, crime-ridden). Every minute in predominantly white environments reinforces white people’s limited worldview, their assumed superiority, and a reliance on problematic depictions of people of color.

DiAngelo gives an example of how white parents teach their children one thing about race while practicing another. In a grocery store, if a white child sees a Black man and points out his skin color, a mother might react with some embarrassment, providing the message that the child shouldn’t talk openly about race. But DiAngelo points out that the mother likely wouldn’t react the same way if the child pointed out a white person’s skin color, or if the man was handsome. In that way, the child is learning that there is something shameful or taboo about naming race, but only for Black people or people of color generally. And the child also learns that people should pretend not to notice aspects of a person that define some people as less valuable.