Author and educator Robin DiAngelo defines “white fragility”—the book’s central topic—as the way in which white people react with anger, guilt, or denial when faced with the realities of racism and white supremacy. But as DiAngelo explains, these reactions center white people’s feelings in conversations about race and only perpetuate white supremacy and racism, because they prevent white people from honestly examining and disrupting racist behavior and systems. Thus, DiAngelo suggests that the crucial first step in dismantling systemic racism and white supremacy is through white people’s acknowledgement that they are complicit in those systems and sitting with that discomfort rather than reacting with white fragility.
Because white people are so unused to viewing themselves in terms of race, talking about race can trigger a range of emotions for them—all of which recenter white people and consequently take the focus off of remedying racist behavior. In the many workplace diversity training workshops that DiAngelo runs, she speaks about how white people hold social and institutional power over people of color. In one instance, a white man pounds his fist on the table in reaction to this statement, yelling about how a white person can’t get a job anymore. This is despite the fact that in the workshop, 38 of the 40 employees are white. The man’s anger positions white people as victims, even though white people clearly have an advantage in obtaining jobs at the company. Such reactions to confronting racial bias “repel the challenge, return [their] racial comfort, and maintain [their] dominance within the racial hierarchy.” The man’s reaction deflects from the fact that he might be complicit in white supremacy so that he doesn’t have to confront any discomfort.
Many white women in DiAngelo’s workshops, when receiving feedback about racism or even when simply confronting injustice, cry in response. In one workshop, a white woman tries to explain her Black colleague’s feelings. When DiAngelo’s Black co-facilitator points out that speaking for the colleague is problematic—as it assumes that she, as a white woman, can speak best for a Black man—the woman begins to cry. As a result, all of the attention goes to her, “demanding the time, energy, and attention from everyone in the room,” while her Black colleague’s point is entirely lost in the discussion. This is another example of how white fragility, defensiveness, and discomfort deflect from addressing racism.
White fragility also prevents white people from holding each other accountable for racism, which again only enables white people to perpetuate that racism. “White solidarity” is the concept that white people are often silent about racism with one another. This is an aspect of white fragility because it is more uncomfortable for white people to challenge other white people’s racism than to disrupt white supremacy. For example, when an uncle says something racially offensive at a dinner, everyone cringes, but no one challenges him because nobody wants to “ruin” the dinner. But choosing silence over discomfort enables racist behavior and comments. Other examples include inappropriate workplace jokes. People often avoid confronting others over racist behavior so they are not seen as “angry, humorless, combative, and not suited to go far.” Conversely, keeping quiet about racism is rewarded with social capital like being seen as “fun, cooperative, and a team player.” However, silence tacitly gives permission to people to perpetuate racist behavior and maintains white supremacy.
In contrast, DiAngelo offers an experience of having her own racism pointed out to illustrate how owning her discomfort and racist behavior helped her remedy that behavior and build stronger relationships with people of color. DiAngelo makes an off-hand comment about her Black colleague Deborah’s hair to another Black woman named Angela, whom DiAngelo has only just met. A few days later, a teammate tells DiAngelo that Angela found her comment inappropriate. DiAngelo is upset that she offended Angela, but she takes the time to reflect on the criticism and talks about the situation with another white person so as not to burden Angela or another person of color with her feelings. DiAngelo resists defensiveness, owns her racism, apologizes to Angela, and accepts additional feedback. In this way, DiAngelo is able to build a stronger relationship with Angela and avoids the same mistake in the future. Resisting white fragility helps her to disrupt racism rather than perpetuate it. DiAngelo writes, “authentic antiracism is rarely comfortable. Discomfort is key to my growth and thus desirable.” While the incident with Angela made her uncomfortable and embarrassed, she stresses that it is more important for her—and all white people—to own that discomfort rather than deflect it in order to learn and grow in the future.
As white people learn to become less defensive about race, this in turn helps people of color feel more open about giving feedback. In a workshop, DiAngelo asked a participant, a man of color, what it would be like if he could simply give white people feedback on problematic behavior and have white people graciously receive it, reflect on it, and work to change their behavior. The man replied, “it would be revolutionary.” Resisting white fragility is an important first step that would then allow white people to examine deeper forms of systemic bias. But none of that examination is possible without first overcoming white fragility’s deflecting tactics.
Related Themes from Other Texts
White Fragility ThemeTracker
White Fragility 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 very real consequences of breaking white solidarity play a fundamental role in maintaining white supremacy. We do indeed risk censure and other penalties from our fellow whites. We might be accused of being politically correct or might be perceived as angry, humorless, combative, and not suited to go far in an organization. In my own life, these penalties have worked as a form of social coercion. Seeking to avoid conflict and wanting to be liked, I have chosen silence all too often.
Conversely, when I kept quiet about racism, I was rewarded with social capital such as being seen as fun, cooperative, and a team player.
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.
Still, this program has been systematically chipped away at, and several states have eliminated affirmative action programs altogether. In turn, African Americans continue to be the most underrepresented group at the organizational leadership level. In 2018, affirmative action has all but been dismantled. Yet invariably, I will encounter a white male—bristling with umbrage—who raises the issue of affirmative action. It seems that we white people just cannot let go of our outrage over how unfair this toothless attempt to rectify centuries of injustice has been to us. And this umbrage consistently surfaces in overwhelmingly white leadership groups that have asked me to come in and help them recruit and retain more people of color.
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.
White fragility functions as a form of bullying; I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me—no matter how diplomatically you try to do so—that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again. white fragility keeps people of color in line and “in their place.” In this way, it is a powerful form of white racial control.
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.
Notice that I did not tell Eva that she was racist or that her story was racist. But what I did do was challenge her self-image as someone exempt from racism. Paradoxically, Eva’s anger that I did not take her claims at face value surfaced within the context of a volunteer workshop on racism, which she ostensibly attended to deepen her understanding of racism.
Racism is the norm rather than an aberration. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion. In recognition of this, I try to follow these guidelines:
1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant—it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it’s on me to build my racial stamina.
2. Thank you.
Whether intended or not, when a white woman cries over some aspect of racism, all the attention immediately goes to her, demanding time, energy, and attention from everyone in the room when they should be focused on ameliorating racism. While she is given attention, the people of color are yet again abandoned and/or blamed. […] Antiracism strategist and facilitator Reagen Price paraphrases an analogy based on the work of critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Price says, “Imagine first responders at the scene of an accident rushing to comfort the person whose car struck a pedestrian, while the pedestrian lies bleeding on the street.” In a common but particularly subversive move, racism becomes about white distress, white suffering, and white victimization.
First, once I was aware that I had behaved problematically, I took the time to process my reaction with another white person. It was not Angela's duty to take care of my feelings or feel pressure to reassure me. I was also careful to choose someone who I knew would hold me accountable, not someone who would insist that Angela was too sensitive. After I vented my feelings (embarrassment, guilt, shame, and regret), we did our best to identify how I had reinforced racism. I was then ready to return to Angela. […]
'When Angela and I met, I owned my racism. I did not focus on my intentions but focused on the impact of my behavior and apologized for that impact. […]
We then did move forward. Today, we have more trust—not less—in our relationship than we did before this incident.
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.
