In addition to investigating white fragility and white supremacy, DiAngelo explores one of the foundational misunderstandings that white people have about racism. Historically, white people have conceptualized racism as individual acts that can only be perpetrated by immoral people. However, this conception only makes white people defensive when someone else addresses or points out their racism, believing that others are questioning their moral character. In this way, DiAngelo illustrates that viewing racism as a quality belonging only to very immoral people helps white people avoid confronting their own racism. Instead, society should conceptualize racist behavior as an inevitable by-product of white supremacy that everyone needs to work to disrupt.
The book explores how racism became associated only with extreme acts of violence and prejudice, which is why many people—and particularly white people—continue to think of it as a trait only belonging to immoral individuals. Prior to the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, it was much more socially acceptable for white people to admit their racial prejudices and belief in white racial superiority. However, because the struggle for civil rights was televised, white people across the nation watched in horror as Black men, women, and children were attacked by police dogs and fire hoses and beaten at lunch counters. Not wanting to be associated with these racist acts of violence, white people became far more reticent to admit to racial prejudice. Even in the present, people often associate racism with extreme and intentional acts. A recent example is the “alt-right” white nationalists marching with torches in Virginia in 2017 to protest the removal of Confederate statues from a park. One white supremacist drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one of them. From the civil rights movement to now, the most visible examples of racism have associated it with violence and immorality.
The good/bad binary (i.e., racists as immoral, violent people and non-racists as good, moral people) helps absolve white people of unintentional or small racist acts and makes them defensive about racism as a whole. By connecting racism to “mean, ignorant, old, uneducated, Southern whites” after the civil rights movement, well-intentioned and open-minded middle-class white people distanced themselves from racism. Most white people, in order to maintain a positive self-image, could not admit to racist behavior, because this would automatically associate them with immorality and violence. This definition of racist—an immoral person who intentionally dislikes others because of their race—makes it difficult to address white people’s racist behavior. DiAngelo writes that white people “then feel the need to defend our character rather than explore the inevitable racial prejudices we have absorbed so that we might change them.” In this way, the good/bad binary definition of racism only perpetuates racism, because it makes white people less likely to acknowledge and remedy it in themselves. The good/bad binary also makes white people complacent about racism as a whole. DiAngelo notes that if she places herself the “not racist” side of the binary, she doesn’t feel the need to take action against racism. She writes that in this scenario, “racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing I need to do. This worldview guarantees that I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.” Racial inequality clearly exists, but when white people think about racism on an individual level and view themselves as not racist, they remain complacent about racism and maintain the status quo.
Overcoming the good/bad binary definition of racism can help people acknowledge racist behavior and, consequently, remedy it. DiAngelo seeks to redefine racism, arguing that racism is the “ongoing use of institutional power and authority to support [racial] prejudice and to systematically enforce discriminatory behaviors with far-reaching effects.” In other words, racism consists not only of individual acts, but how those acts contribute to and perpetuate systematic discrimination over time. If a white person recognizes that racism is “a system into which [they were] socialized,” then they’ll be receptive to feedback about their own racism and see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. When a person’s character isn’t called into question, they are much more open to challenging certain ways that they uphold or perpetuate racism. Challenging the good/bad binary can be liberating for white people, who no longer have to defend themselves against what they perceive as accusations of immorality. DiAngelo writes, “When I start from the premise that of course I have been thoroughly socialized into the racist culture in which I was born, I no longer need to expend energy denying that fact. I am eager—even excited—to identify my inevitable collusion so that I can figure out how to stop colluding!” In this way, throwing out the good/bad binary definition of racism can help ease the tension of feeling defensive and can enable people to remedy their racist behaviors rather than denying them.
White Fragility reinforces the idea that it isn’t useful to think of oneself as belonging on the “good” side of the false binary society has constructed about racism. Rather, it is more important for white people to view themselves on a continuum, actively working to interrupt racism whenever they can.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Racism and the Good/Bad Binary ThemeTracker
Racism and the Good/Bad Binary 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.
While making racism bad seems like a positive change, we have to look at how this functions in practice. Within this paradigm, to suggest that I am racist is to deliver a deep moral blow—a kind of character assassination. Having received this blow, I must defend my character, and that is where all my energy will go-to deflecting the charge, rather than reflecting on my behavior. In this way, the good/bad binary makes it nearly impossible to talk to white people about racism, what it is, how it shapes all of us, and the inevitable ways that we are conditioned to participate in it. If we cannot discuss these dynamics or see ourselves within them, we cannot stop participating in racism. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand—much less interrupt—racism.
Most of us alive before and during the 1960s have had images from the civil rights conflicts of that time held up as the epitome of racism. Today we have images of white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, to hold up. And while speaking up against these explicitly racist actions is critical, we must also be careful not to use them to keep ourselves on the “good” side of a false binary. I have found it much more useful to think of myself as on a continuum. Racism is so deeply woven into the fabric of our society that I do not see myself escaping from that continuum in my lifetime. But I can continually seek to move further along it. I am not in a fixed position on the continuum; my position is dictated by what I am actually doing at a given time.
Conceptualizing myself on an active continuum changes the question from whether I am or am not racist to a much more constructive question: Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism in this context?
These white teachers’ responses illustrate several dynamics of white fragility. First, the teachers never considered that in not understanding the student’s reaction, they might be lacking some knowledge or context. They demonstrated no curiosity about the student’s perspective or why she might have taken offense. Nor did they show concern about the student’s feelings. They were unable to separate intentions from impact. […] His colleague, aware that Mr. Roberts was in serious trouble about a cross-racial incident, still maintained white solidarity with him by validating their shared perspective and invalidating that of the student of color. The teachers used the student witness who excused the comment as proof that the other student was wrong. According to them, the witness was the correct student because she denied any racial implications. Finally, the teachers used this interaction as an opportunity to increase racial divides rather than bridge them and to protect their worldviews and positions.
In my workshops, I often ask people of color, “How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you?” Eye-rolling, head-shaking, and outright laughter follow, along with the consensus of rarely, if ever. I then ask, “What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?” Recently a man of color sighed and said, “It would be revolutionary.” I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of that response. It would be revolutionary if we could receive, reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, the man’s response points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, it indicates how simple it can be to take responsibility for our racism. However, we aren’t likely to get there if we are operating from the dominant worldview that only intentionally mean people can participate in racism.
Unlike heavy feelings such as guilt, the continuous work of identifying my internalized superiority and how it may be manifesting itself is incredibly liberating. When I start from the premise that of course I have been thoroughly socialized into the racist culture in which I was born, I no longer need to expend energy denying that fact. I am eager—even excited—to identify my inevitable collusion so that I can figure out how to stop colluding! Denial and the defensiveness that is needed to maintain it is exhausting.
