White Fragility
Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo
Having read it
★★★☆☆
A good read with perceptive and honest views and it certainly adds to the social conversation; its words and insights could be taught to younger white generations to better help develop and progress worthwhile change to break down the many Western world and white supremacist approaches and attitudes.
As of February 2024: The book This is Not America raises a good critique of White Fragility and other similar (self-help) books as well as the reality of an America and its ways and means (certainly of individualism) that drive and steer the messages, attitudes and oft-sought middle-class answers to race, its constructions, uses and treatment. Not that Britain doesn’t have its own issues and difficulties with its near-constant looking to America:
The frame of reference is still American: they still accept American exceptionalism, obsess in an American way about race and popularize their ideas through an American style of self-help. In order to have a better understanding of the debates on race in America, and the ideas that emerge from these debates, we thus need to judge them on American terms. We should not view them through a neutral perspective.
Tomiwa OwoladeThis is Not America
A good passage
Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of colour as a deviation from that norm. Whiteness is not acknowledged by white people, and the white reference point is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone. White people find it very difficult to think about whiteness as a specific state of being that could have an impact on one’s life and perceptions.
A second good passage
We are unaware of, or do not acknowledge, the meaning of race and its impact on our own lives. Thus we do not recognize or admit to white privilege and the norms that produce and maintain it. It follows that to name whiteness, much less suggest that it has meaning and grants unearned advantage, will be deeply disconcerting and destabilizing, thus triggering the protective responses of white fragility.
A third good passage
Someone who claims to have been taught to treat everyone the same is simply telling me that he or she doesn’t understand socialization. It is not possible to teach someone to treat everyone the same. We can be told, and often are told, to treat everyone the same, but we cannot successfully be taught to do so because human beings are not objective. Further, we wouldn’t want to treat everyone the same because people have different needs and different relationships with us. Differential treatment in itself is not the problem. For example, I wouldn’t give a document with a twelve-point font to a person with low vision, even though someone else wouldn’t have any trouble reading it. The problem is the misinformation that circulates around us and causes our differential treatment to be inequitable.