Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Fragility, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
White Fragility
White Supremacy
Racism and the Good/Bad Binary
Individualism, Objectivity, and Meritocracy
Summary
Analysis
The previous chapters illustrate how white people are insulated from race-based stress. But when ideologies like color-blindness, meritocracy, and individualism are challenged, intense reactions are common. This is due to social taboos, the good/bad binary, internalized superiority, and a deep investment in a system that benefits white people. Most people have limited information about what racism is and how it works. Even isolated courses in “cultural competency” use racially coded language like “urban” or “disadvantaged” but rarely “white” or “privileged.”
White people rarely have to address racism with direct language, instead using coded language cited here. This moment harks back to earlier in the book when DiAngelo’s friend bought a cheap house in a sketchy area, and DiAngelo immediately knew that the friend was implying that it’s a predominantly Black neighborhood. Beliefs like meritocracy, individualism, and objectivity prevent white people from considering their privilege, so when they are forced to address this aspect of society, they instead react with white fragility as a way to deflect from facing these issues directly.
Themes
Even when programs address racism directly, white people commonly respond with anger, withdrawal, guilt, argumentation, and avoidance—all of which cause facilitators to deflect from addressing racism directly. Most white people simply never have to build the capacity to endure racial stress—DiAngelo only started to when she became a diversity trainer.
This passage highlights how typical white fragility responses—such as anger, withdrawal, and defensiveness—are tools of white supremacy because they deflect from addressing racism directly and therefore uphold the racial status quo.
Themes
DiAngelo cites anthropologist Pierre Bordieu’s concept of habitus to understand white fragility, Habitus indicates how people perceive the world around them and react to it based their “field” and “capital.” Field is a person’s environment, and capital is the social value people hold in a given field. Capital can shift with the field—like a school custodian coming upstairs to speak with a receptionist, where the receptionist has more status. But when the receptionist goes downstairs to the supply room, the custodian has more control.
Habitus helps people understand and navigate both typical and atypical social situations, and includes how race, class, and gender will play into those power dynamics. Habitus helps people maintain social comfort as they navigate unfamiliar situations—similarly, white fragility helps white people restore their comfort in discussions of race.
Themes
When social cues are unfamiliar or when they challenge a person’s capital, they’ll use habitus to regain social comfort. In this sense, white fragility is a form of habitus in discussions of race. White people cannot tolerate challenges to their objectivity, taboos on talking openly about race, or white solidary. And so, when met with these challenges, white people are at a loss with how to respond constructively and respond with white fragility.
The reason that people react with white fragility is because of their discomfort with talking about race, placing them outside of a typical habitus. Thus, white fragility is a tool to help return people to social comfort, thereby also maintaining white supremacy and blocking any challenge to it.
Themes
Get the entire White Fragility LitChart as a printable PDF.
DiAngelo once mentored a teacher, Mr. Roberts, who made inappropriate racial comments to a Black female student. In one workshop session, Mr. Roberts told DiAngelo about a colleague who called one of her Black students “girl.” When the student took offense, another Black student said that the teacher called all her students “girl.” Mr. Roberts used this story to express his dismay over not being able to “say anything anymore.” Neither he nor his colleague considered why the student might have taken offense. Mr. Roberts was maintaining white solidarity by validating their shared perspective and invalidating the Black student. As a result, the teachers increased racial divides rather than bridged them.
The episode with Mr. Roberts illustrates how white fragility maintains rather than challenges white supremacy. He is supporting another white colleague’s behavior and maintaining his idea that the student was just being overly sensitive, rather than considering the students’ perspective and bridging a racial divide. Thus, he is able to return to racial comfort and maintain that neither of them is racist rather than being open to feedback and working to change racist behavior.
Themes
