White Fragility for Dummies
For any white person even beginning to try to examine racism authentically, you run into the phrase ‘white fragility.’
Robin DiAngelo published her now bestselling book “White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” years ago, though I had never heard this phrase, nor had any inclination to understand what it meant. But for me in this moment, it is a powerful lens through which I begin to see my whiteness for what it is, how it keeps racism in place, and a tool to try to figure out how to work through it so that I can be real about anti-racist practice in my life.
So, for all of my white friends who may have been too fragile to delve, but are clearly open because you’re reading this –– let’s do this. I’ll start by defining what it is. DiAngelo defines white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.” Essentially, it’s a resistance –– a white person’s need to build a solid defense against having any meaningful racial conversations, while at the same time (consciously or unconsciously) continuing to perpetuate racism. Even now, I feel defensive just being told that I’m defensive against the idea of confronting racism. Ugh. So white. So fragile.
Okay, but before we dive in what it is, just a word on why we are so fragile. Lots of reasons have been hypothesized, but the one that resonates most for me is that I am the lived product of a very insular experience and the impact that experience has on why I struggle with real conversations about racism.
What do I mean by an insular lived experience? For me, I have lived a life rarely ever out of my racial comfort zone –– I’m a white person, with a white frame of reference, having lived a white experience. For the better part of it, almost exclusively surrounded by people who look like me — in my neighborhoods, at social events I chose to attend, at my kids’ schools, my workplaces and play spaces. My daily conversations have rarely involved race. I have gone through the better part of my life without context, historical or modern day. Didn’t know much about our real history –– colonization, oppression, discrimination, or marginalization at the systemic level –– so any of my conversations about racism have been barely superficial at best.
Living in this space, without any real racial awareness, I haven’t taken in racism as the deeply embedded system that it is. The notion that all of our institutions were created out of a racist belief system propagating white supremacy is a new perspective. Racism to me was always about individual acts of discrimination and prejudice — conscious, intentional, bad things that bad people did to others. And because I considered myself a good person, incapable of doing such things, I never connected myself to racism. Any insinuation that I might perpetuate racism was a personal affront to my goodness as a human. And, I have defended that goodness through whatever my version of white fragility is –– and in doing so, stayed blissfully ignorant. Well, hopefully until now.
Let’s keep going. DiAngelo talks about a few pillars of white fragility that I’d like to unpack one by one.
Any exception I apply to the ‘I’m not a racist’ card I carry, I can see now is futile, because nothing can exempt me from having been raised within a racial society.
The first defense we use is something she calls ‘individualism.’ It’s the feeling that each of us is unique and brings our own perspective to the table regardless of how we might have been socialized to feel. So, when confronting the idea of my racism, I might defend myself (and avoid engaging in a real conversation) with ‘but, I’m Jewish, so I’m a target of racism myself,” or “I was raised by a Black nanny whom I loved more than life, how could I be racist?” or “I have friends who are People of Color who are a meaningful part of my life and that I love, how could I be racist?” Any exception I apply to the ‘I’m not a racist’ card I carry, I can see now is futile, because nothing can exempt me from having been raised within a racial society. So, assuming I have been shaped by that society, I need to better understand how I’ve been shaped, acknowledge my role, and start having those courageous conversations (with myself and others!) that my fragility has defended me against.
The second pillar of white fragility she refers to as ‘universalism,’ (ie. aren’t we all the same?), which is ironically kind of the opposite of individualism. This is when I say, “ I was raised to believe that everyone was equal,” or “I’m colorblind, it doesn’t matter to me if someone is black or brown, or white, I just don’t look at people through that lens.” But that can’t be true because it denies that we, as white people, have had a fundamentally different experience, and, in doing so, it denies that racism is real. Universalism may feel like a good excuse, but it dismisses the reality of a racist society and is a hurtful defense I’ve definitely used to deflect and stay in my comfort zone.
The third pillar of white fragility DiAngelo highlights is probably the easiest one for me to wrap my head around. She calls it the “good/bad” binary and she believes it to be the number one construct that keeps racism in place, and makes it hard to talk to white people about racism. We’ve been socialized to believe that racism is not a system (an invented construct by white folks, no less), but something that is ascribed to an individual. And that individual is of course, a bad person, ignorant, bigoted, mean, uneducated, back-country, maybe even someone from the South. On the other hand, we’ve also been socialized to believe that someone who is not racist is likely better educated, more progressive, open minded, well intentioned, maybe even from the North, like me. But in the post-Civil-Rights-Movement era I grew up in, these ‘truths’ were mutually exclusive. You could not be a good person and someone complicit with racism. So there I am waving the white flag of white fragility. Good person. Not a racist.
You could not be a good person and someone complicit with racism. So there I am waving the white flag of white fragility. Good person. Not a racist.
The fourth pillar gives me the greatest pause. It is the power of segregation that keeps the systems in place and keeps me from even entering into conversations about race. I always thought segregation was a thing of the past. For me, it was about the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th, early 20th centuries, school segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson, culminating in the Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education. Nope. It is a thing of the present. The institutions that I live within were created to propagate white supremacy and promote segregation at every turn. Every institution of our capitalist society (housing, education, finance, defense, commerce, health & human services, government, any institution that effects my life) reinforces this system of unequal power. Racism is axiomatically systemic. And so, I live a segregated, predominantly white, life. And I’ve consciously planned for it to be that way.
Which brings me to DiAngelo’s last pillar of white fragility, and that is my internalized superiority and unconscious or otherwise investment in the racial order. Society has reinforced for me, at every crossroad of my life, that, fundamentally, it’s better to be white. I have internalized that perspective and have called upon that final defense as I have continued to ignore my racist point of view.
Okay, that’s a lot to unpack. And honestly, a lot for me to work through. But even though much of this brings up hard feelings, I am liberated by the notion that I can be a racist and be a good person at the same time.
And that permission has opened up so many doors to exploration, understanding, reflection, revelation and action. The system into which I’ve been socialized does not absolve me of the role I play within. That system has always been broken, built upon racism with intentions to consolidate white supremacy and dominance. My entire world view was formed through that lens. And no, I didn’t cause it and it’s not my fault that I was born white or privileged, but I am responsible to help change it.
“the default of our society is the reproduction of racism, it is built into every institution, and if we just carry on, we’ll reproduce it.” (Robin DiAngelo)
When you begin to recognize the racial waters we all swim in every day, and the disparities our systems perpetuate, you also begin to realize that inaction is a form of action in perpetuating racism. “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist” (Angela Davis)
I’m sitting still with that thought and what it means for me, how I can work toward the goal of reversing my own culture of complicity, and know that I am still learning and likely will always be.
