White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
(Format used for this read: Print–paperback)
If you are a white American reading this post, please pause your reading of this review AND GO ORDER THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY.
I am not playing.
I am for real serious.
GO ORDER IT NOW.
Don’t even worry about checking out my review yet to see if it is a book you need to read…trust me when I say YOU NEED THIS BOOK ON YOUR SHELF.
Do not check it out from the library.
Do not borrow it from a friend.
Do not listen to it on audiobook (I love me some audiobooks yall, but there are some books you just HAVE to have in print and this is ABSOLUTELY one of them)
You need to OWN this book….read it and reread it and then read it again.
Underline. Highlight. Dog ear. PROCESS.
So go ahead….you go click into another window right quick and get it ordered…then come on back and hear my thoughts on it.
Go ahead….I’ll be right here when you get back…..
Done? Awesome. You just made a very important purchase that will hopefully change your worldview, challenge your thought process, and get you started on a journey to dismantle your whiteness.
So…review time….
Here is the official summary of this book:
“What is White Fragility?
In this groundbreaking and timely book, antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility. Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence.
These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth examination, DiAngelo explores how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
‘A vital, necessary, and beautiful book, a bracing call to white folk everywhere to see their whiteness for what it is and to seize the opportunity to make things better now.’ –Michael Eric Dyson
‘Robin Di’Angelo’s White Fragility brings language to the emotional structures that make true discussions about racial attitudes difficult. With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people.’ In doing so, she moves our national discussions forward with new ‘rules of engagement’. This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change through productive social and intimate relationships.’ –Claudia Rankine “
My journey of dismantling/ understanding my own whiteness and also the REAL meaning of racism in this country began in February 2017.
I joined a Be The Bridge to Racial Unity small group…and my life was completely flipped upside down for the better.
Everything I thought I knew about our country’s foundation and history was SHOOK…because what I knew was COMPLETELY INACCURATE.
Everything I thought I knew about the concept of race was thrown out the window…because what I knew was COMPLETELY WRONG.
Everything I thought I knew about my own biases, stereotypes and prejudices (or really what I thought was a LACK OF) was rattled…because what I knew was so IMBEDDED in me by our society that I had millions I was acting upon without even acknowledging or being aware of what they were.
I began my journey of dismantling, relearning and educating in that group.
I learned the first important thing I can do as a white person to fight racism and injustice in this country is to LISTEN AND LEARN.
We as white people wanna jump right in and start “fixing” things…but we can not go into battle without understanding what the fight is all about…and understanding our own part in the cause of it in the first place.
We gotta do some serious work in OURSELVES before we can help do any kind of work out in the world…or we will just continue to cause more trauma and damage to people of color… and we will also just further feed into the cycle of oppression and inequality that keeps the wheels of America turning as the white supremacist societal mess that it is.
The longer we wait to do that hard work within ourselves, the more it costs in the literal lives of black and brown people in our country.
In that group I joined in 2017, I was blessed to meet two black women who have become not only two cherished friends to my life….but they also have been fountains of wisdom, knowledge and correction as teachers and mentors to me as well.
The resources they have recommended to me over the past 3 years are ones that are invaluable to my growth process (as well as my family’s) …..I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to adequately thank them for the difference they have made.
But one way I honor the patience and love they have given and continue to give me is to pass along what I have learned from them to other white people….so we can work alongside each other to KNOW better so we can DO better as a white collective.
Ignorance can’t be an excuse anymore, yall.
And here is where Robin Di’Angelo is critical.
My mentors recommended her work to me… and it has been one of the biggest impacts in my own racial understanding and dismantling process.
This book right here should be required reading by EVERY SINGLE WHITE AMERICAN.
If you are just now beginning to see the racial injustices that are rampant in our country….and you are wondering how to start your own learning process…
Reading this book right here is your very first step.
Robin has 12 chapters in this 154 page book. Each one of them is packed to OVERFLOWING with critical information that we must get a handle on to do some serious work in ourselves….history we have to relearn….biases we have to uncover….roadblocks in our psyche we have to take apart piece by piece….
The wealth of information in these pages is 100 percent immensely valuable.
Mrs DiAngelo leaves no stone unturned here, cuts no corners and does not tiptoe around ANYTHING.
She will not sugar coat ….she is direct in her information and her calling out of our white nonsense….as she SHOULD be…because that is what we NEED.
You absolutely will be uncomfortable while you read….but like I have said before….growth CAN NOT come from being in your comfort zone.
She will pop that cushy little white bubble of privilege you’ve been floating in, rip off those white blinders you use to see the world and will take you to the mat in challenging your defensive tactics in regards to discussing race.
As you can see in that picture up there, as I read thru books such as these, I take FURIOUS notes. I wish I could share EVERY SINGLE thing I wrote down from each chapter….but you know…you need to do your own reading so you can do your own work 😆
But I do want to share the title of each chapter and a couple of my highlighted thoughts or direct quotes so you can get an idea of what kinda work Robin has you going in hard with here….consider this just a sneak peek of sorts:
*FOREWORD, AUTHOR’S NOTE, INTRODUCTION*
-Before you even get into the full chapters, truth bombs get dropped even before page 1.
“Racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we’re protesting America” -Beyonce
“Decisions made at tables affect the lives of those not at the table…we don’t have to INTEND to exclude for the results of our actions to BE exclusion.”
“We consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very identities as ‘good, moral people’….the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand it.”
*CHAPTER 1: The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism*
-Here are the challenges Robin breaks down and explains ( I ain’t gonna elaborate here…because yall need to go get at that work yourself):
- We don’t see ourselves in racial terms.
- Our opinions are uninformed.
- We don’t understand socialization.
- We have a simplistic understanding of racism.
*CHAPTER 2: Racism & White Supremacy*
-This chapter is suuuuuper important in your dismantling because it dives into the exact definitions of race (a social construct not a biological makeup), prejudice, discrimination and white supremacy. I guarantee you that what you THINK you know about these terms is INCORRECT. Robin dives into how all these things are embedded in our nation’s history, policies and and societal ideologies.
*CHAPTER 3: Racism After the Civil Rights Movement”
-Here Robin explains how racism has adapted over the years and how that affects our unconscious implicit biases and the way we talk about (or usually DON’T talk about) race.
-She describes new racism as “ways in which racism has adapted over time so that modern norms, policies, and practices result in similar racial outcomes as those in the past while not APPEARING to be explicitly racist.”
*CHAPTER 4: How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?”*
“White people: I don’t want you to understand ME better; I want you to understand YOURSELVES. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance.” -Ijeoma Oluo
“Claiming that the past was socially better than the present is a hallmark of white supremacy. Consider ANY period in the past from the perspective of people of color…. “
“Because we are not raised to see ourselves in racial terms or to see white space as racialized space, we position ourselves as innocent of race…”
*CHAPTER 5: The Good/Bad Binary*
-This is probably the chapter that convicts me the MOST. It did the first time I read it, and it did it again this second go round. Here is why…. this is one of the BIGGEST barriers with us white people in discussing and understanding racism in our country. We are extremely focused on individualism and on personal actions….and that is how we view racism. Here is how Robin explains it:
“The most effective adaptation of racism over time is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people. If we are not aware of having negative thoughts about people of color, don’t tell racist jokes, are nice people, and even have friends of color, then we cannot be racist.
Thus, a person is either racist or not racist; if a person is racist, that person is bad; if a person is not racist, that person is good.
Although racism does of course occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system.
The good/bad binary is the fundamental misunderstanding driving white defensiveness about being connected to racism. We simply do not understand how socialization and implicit bias work”
*CHAPTER 6: Anti-Blackness*
“Racism is complex and nuanced…..to challenge ideologies of racism, white people must suspend our perception of ourselves as unique and/or outside race… we need to see white people as a GROUP”
“Anti-blackness is foundational to our identities as white people….whiteness has always predicated blackness….there was no concept of race before the need to justify the enslavement of Africans”
“An honest assessment of America’s relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nuturer, but it’s destroyer. And this destruction did not end with slavery.” -Ta’Nehsi Coates
*CHAPTER 7: Racial Triggers for White People*
-In this chapter, the author starts to dig deeper into several dynamics of white fragility and the cause of them.
“Most white people have limited information about what racism is and how it works….because it is repetitive, our socialization produces and reproduces thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions”
*CHAPTER 8: The Result: White Fragility*
-Robin keeps digging deep into our fragility and gives many examples and research as she explains.
“Despite its ubiquity, white superiority is unnamed and denied by most whites….white people’s moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging complicity in it”
-She gives an example of a dialogue that has taken place at one of her workshops that I thought was extremely powerful. Here it is:
Robin (addressing the people of color in her audience): “How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you?”
*people of color respond with eye rolls, head shakes and “Rarely, if EVER.”
Robin: ” What would it be like if you could give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect and work to change the behavior?”
Man of color in audience: “It would be REVOLUTIONARY.”
*CHAPTER 9: White Fragility in Action*
-In these pages, the author speaks about white people’s common emotional reactions that we have when our assumptions and behaviors are challenged and the behaviors that result from it. She goes into how those things are problematic, unproductive, and damaging. This made me squirm A LOT because I have said and done SO MANY of the things she listed.
*CHAPTER 10: White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement*
“Stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them”
*CHAPTER 11: White Women’s Tears*-
“If we whites want to interrupt this system, we have to get racially UNCOMFORTABLE and be willing to examine the effects of our racial engagement…tears driven by white guilt are self indulgent.”
“We must continue to ask HOW our racism manifests, not IF”
“The default of our current system is the reproduction of racial inequality; our institutions were designed to reproduce racial inequality and they do so with efficiency….”
*CHAPTER 12: Where Do We Go From Here?*
(note: DO NOT SKIP AHEAD TO THIS CHAPTER. You must read everything else first. We white people tend to want to jump right into action FIRST…but we CAN NOT until we do SERIOUS WORK, yall)
-“It is a messy lifelong process, but one that is necessary to align my professed values with my real actions.”
WHEWWWWWW…….Okay…so that was A LOT, right?! ? And those are just snippets, yall.
Did what you read up there make you uneasy? Angry? Defensive? If so, that is completely natural…and EXACTLY why you need to read this book.
Because that IS white fragility…and exactly what we gotta break on down.
Until we do that, we can not move forward and we can not do better.
I will share one last Robin quote with you to sum it all up:
“Consider racism a matter of life and death (as it is for people of color) and do your homework.”
Listen…this will be a tough read if you do it right.
Don’t do it alone…find another white friend to process thru this with….if I know you in real life, I am glad to be that person to be alongside you ANYTIME.
And….PLEASE DO NOT ASK YOUR BLACK OR BROWN FRIEND TO PROCESS THIS MESS WITH YOU (unless they directly offer to do so)….they do not need that emotional taxation and trauma.
Get the book. Listen up. And let’s all GET TO WORK.