Understanding white people as a collective group is key to combating white supremacy, because it draws attention to the advantages that white people have in society. However, this understanding is difficult for most white people because of three key Western ideologies: individualism, objectivity, and meritocracy. Individualism maintains that every person is unique from others, even those within social groups; objectivity holds that it is possible to be free of all bias; and meritocracy suggests that anyone can succeed if they work hard. In White Fragility, DiAngelo argues that these three ideologies construct false narratives and help white people deny their intrinsic advantages as a group.
Individualism helps perpetuate white supremacy because individual white people try to argue that they have not received the same advantages or privileges as most white people. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character. However, white people gain an intrinsic advantage from being white, counter to the ideas of individualism. For example, white people “control all major institutions of society and set the policies and practices that others live by”—being white grants them the benefits of automatically belonging to those institutions based on race. Many white people use individualism to show how they are different from other white people and have not received the same privilege. In one of DiAngelo’s talks about diversity in the workplace, she speaks in front of 200 employees of a company—only five of which are people of color. When she is done speaking, a white man approaches her to say that because he is Italian and Italians were once discriminated against, white people can also experience racism. DiAngelo notes the irony of his question, as so many of his co-workers are white and so clearly have an advantage in being hired at the company. She points out that he should “consider how Italian Americans were able to become white and how that assimilation has shaped his experiences in the present as a white man.” DiAngelo does not intend to suggest that white people have never faced any kind of discrimination, but that any discrimination they faced does not exempt them from participating in and benefiting from white supremacy.
Objectivity and trying to avoid the issue of race helps white people believe that they are not biased, obscuring the reality that white people really do carry bias and have different experiences from people of color. White supremacy enables white people to see themselves outside of race, as “just human.” For example, Shakespeare and Jane Austen are often seen as representing the “universal human experience,” while Toni Morrison and James Baldwin are seen as representing the Black experience. White narratives become standard narratives and dominate society. Yet this conceals the fact that the white experience is not a universal experience and prevents white people from considering themselves as a racial group with a distinct perspective or biases.
Objectivity protects white people’s biases, because denying that they have those biases ensures that they won't examine or change them. The concept of “colorblindness” is another means of helping white people avoid the topic of race and purport objectivity. Colorblindness holds that acknowledging race is racist; “pretending not to see race” will help end racism because in theory, it will lead people to treat each other equally. But this is a deeply flawed ideology. When a white woman in one of DiAngelo’s diversity training workshops tells DiAngelo’s Black co-leader that she (the white woman) doesn’t see race, the co-leader explains that pretending not to see his race assumed that he had the same experiences she did—but this ignores the fact that people genuinely do see race, and that race holds deep social meaning for all people, even if unconsciously. DiAngelo writes, “while the idea of color blindness may have started as a well-intentioned strategy for interrupting racism, in practice it has served to deny the reality of racism and thus hold it in place.” Racial bias is largely unconscious, and so only by investigating racist perceptions (instead of denying them) can white people disrupt those biases.
The belief that the United States is a true meritocracy obscures the systemic inequality that people of color have faced and continue to face. Jackie Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major league baseball. Yet talking about him in this way suggests that “Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level.” DiAngelo asks readers to imagine if instead, the narrative read: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” Upholding Jackie Robinson as exceptional and that he had success simply because he worked hard enough downplays the idea that he faced barriers as a result of white supremacy, and that without those barriers, other Black people may have had the same success. When white people look for schools and their associated neighborhoods, they often select schools on the basis of test scores. However, contrary to the idea of meritocracy, schools are deeply unequal: schools made up predominantly of students of color often receive less resources and therefore they have lower test scores as a result. This cycle only continues as white families subsequently avoid those schools and further devalue them, writing them off as “bad schools.” Just like individualism and objectivity, the belief in meritocracy obscures the disadvantages people of color face and the advantages that white people receive.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Individualism, Objectivity, and Meritocracy ThemeTracker
Individualism, Objectivity, and Meritocracy Quotes in White Fragility
Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable—the mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility.
In fact, when we try to talk openly and honestly about race, white fragility quickly emerges as we are so often met with silence, defensiveness, argumentation, certitude, and other forms of pushback. These are not natural responses; they are social forces that prevent us from attaining the racial knowledge we need to engage more productively, and they function powerfully to hold the racial hierarchy in place. These forces include the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy, narrow and repetitive media representations of people of color, segregation in schools and neighborhoods, depictions of whiteness as the human ideal, truncated history, jokes and warnings, taboos on openly talking about race, and white solidarity.
The first in line was a white man who explained that he was Italian American and that Italians were once considered black and discriminated against, so didn’t I think that white people experience racism too? That he could be in that overwhelmingly white room of coworkers and exempt himself from an examination of his whiteness because Italians were once discriminated against is an all-too-common example of individualism. A more fruitful form of engagement (because it expands rather than protects his current worldview) would have been to consider how Italian Americans were able to become white and how that assimilation has shaped his experiences in the present as a white man. His claims did not illustrate that he was different from other white people when it comes to race. I can predict that many readers will make similar claims of exception precisely because we are products of our culture, not separate from it.
Because race is a product of social forces, it has also manifested itself along class lines; poor and working-class people were not always perceived as fully white. In a society that grants fewer opportunities to those not seen as white, economic and racial forces are inseparable. However, poor and working-class whites were eventually granted full entry into whiteness as a way to exploit labor. If poor whites were focused on feeling superior to those below them in status, they were less focused on those above. The poor and working classes, if united across race, could be a powerful force. But racial divisions have served to keep them from organizing against the owning class who profits from their labor. Still, although working-class whites experience classism, they aren’t also experiencing racism. I grew up in poverty and felt a deep sense of shame about being poor. But I also always knew that I was white, and that it was better to be white.
If you stand close to a birdcage and press your face against the wires, your perception of the bars will disappear and you will have an almost unobstructed view of the bird. If you turn your head to examine one wire of the cage closely, you will not be able to see the other wires. If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view, you may not understand why the bird doesn’t just go around the single wire and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place in the cage.
But if you stepped back and took a wider view, you would begin to see that the wires come together in an interlocking pattern-a pattern that works to hold the bird firmly in place.
The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would have removed him.
Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy.
He then explained to her that he was black, he was confident that she could see this, and that his race meant that he had a very different experience in life than she did. If she were ever going to understand or challenge racism, she would need to acknowledge this difference. Pretending that she did not notice that he was black was not helpful to him in any way, as it denied his reality-indeed, it refused his reality-and kept hers insular and unchallenged. This pretense that she did not notice his race assumed that he was “just like her,” and in so doing, she projected her reality onto him. For example, I feel welcome at work so you must too; I have never felt that my race mattered, so you must feel that yours doesn’t either. But of course, we do see the race of other people, and race holds deep social meaning for us.
It is rare for me to experience a sense of not belonging racially, and these are usually very temporary, easily avoidable situations. Indeed, throughout my life, I have been warned that I should avoid situations in which I might be a racial minority. These situations are often presented as scary, dangerous, or “sketchy.” Yet if the environment or situation is viewed as good, nice, or valuable, I can be confident that as a white person, I will be seen as racially belonging there.
To use an example from school, consider the writers we are all expected to read; the list usually includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare. These writers are seen as representing the universal human experience, and we read them precisely because they are presumed to be able to speak to us all. Now consider the writers we turn to during events promoting diversity—events such as Multicultural Authors Week and Black History Month. These writers usually include Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Amy Tan, and Sandra Cisneros. We go to these writers for the black or Asian perspective; Toni Morrison is always seen as a black writer, not just a writer. But when we are not looking for the black or Asian perspective, we return to white writers, reinforcing the idea of whites as just human, and people of color as particular kinds (racialized) of humans.
“In a postracial era, we don’t have to say it’s about race or the color of the kids in the building…We can concentrate poverty and kids of color and then fail to provide the resources to support and sustain those schools, and then we can see a school full of black kids and say, ‘Oh, look at their test scores.’ It’s all very tidy now, this whole system.” Readers have no doubt heard schools and neighborhoods discussed in these terms and know that this talk is racially coded; “urban” and “low test scores” are code for “not white” and therefore less desirable.
