White Fragility: Why It`s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
By Robin DiAngelo. Beacon Press, 2018.
Reviewed by Chris Caldwell
Which Bible verse you read often matters more than how you read it. Consider us white folks and racism. For most of my former pastoral career, I would have said that key verses on racism are, “For all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), or “As you did it to one of the least of these” (Matt. 25:40).
Over the past few years my African-American colleagues have taught me to look instead to the story of Zacchaeus: “[I]f I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much” (Luke 19:8). As Clay Calloway once said to our Louisville Empower West weekly pastors gathering, “Reconciliation is an accounting term.” Salvation came to Zacchaeus’ house not when he saw his sin, but after he owned up to his sin by promising to sacrifice some of the privilege he had acquired.
Racism is about hateful words and callous interactions, to be sure. But even more than that, it is about power and privilege. I have found, among white friends, that it often goes poorly when this idea is unpacked. Denounce the Charlottesville White Nationalists, and whites say “Amen.” Point out that by 2020, median white household wealth will likely be 86 times that of African-Americans, thanks in no small measure to the present-day legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, and the congregation often falls silent. (For more, see Brian Thompson’s Forbes post, Feb. 18, 2018.)
Robin DiAngelo has made a career of walking into this lion’s den. A professor, consultant and trainer on racial justice, she regularly challenges whites to take an honest look at our privilege, the lifelong wind at our backs. Her intended audience is not White Nationalists and those who claim the racist mantle; it is instead those of us who denounce racists while at the same time overlooking the privileges we enjoy due to racist systems.
As “white progressives” (DiAngelo’s term), our failure to take account of “our investment in a system that serves us” leads to a culture where “white progressives cause the most daily damage for people of color.” The real problem, she argues, is not people who hate on the basis of color, but rather “color-blind racism” that says “if we pretend not to notice race, then there can be no racism." For example, someone once said to DiAngelo’s African-American co-trainer, “I don’t see race; I don’t see you as black.” Her co-trainer’s response was, “Then how will you see racism?"
DiAngelo says that beneath the surface of white progressivism, we find the “massive depth of racist socialization: messages, beliefs, images, associations, internalized superiority and entitlement, perceptions and emotions. Color-blind ideology makes it difficult for us to address these unconscious beliefs. While the idea of color blindness may have started out as a well-intentioned strategy for interrupting racism, in practice it has served to deny the reality."
Medical researchers warn us that infections are adapting to antibiotics. Likewise, DiAngelo and others (such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva) warn us of more sinister modern strands of racism that are harder to detect and to root out. Bonilla-Silva warns, for example, in his Racism without Racists, that recent surveys on racism, if they ask the same questions about racism that were asked in the 1960’s, will give us a false sense of progress. Yes, avowed prejudice is on the decline. But segregated neighborhoods, struggling black schools, and profound health and wealth inequalities persist at rates not that different from the 1960’s. I know of only two explanations for this: Either black people are inferior, or racism is alive and well, even though few will salute its flag. Most whites I know reject the explicit racism of black inferiority yet struggle to see the racist structures still resulting in profound racial inequalities. As DiAngelo puts it, “What is particularly problematic about this contradiction is that white people’s moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity with it."
What then does she propose? To begin, step outside the “white equilibrium [that] is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism." In short, we must move beyond our white fragility and "build up our stamina to bear witness to the pain of racism that we cause. It is the responsibility of white people to be less fragile; people of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible."
She offers additional steps and strategies, most of which stem from insights gained through interactions with fragile white people in her role as a presenter. Out of her years of experience, DiAngelo helps us see the dynamics at play and offers concrete suggestions for how we can frame difficult conversations. DiAngelo is quick to credit the African-Americans with whom she leads these training events. Clearly, she has learned and is learning much from them; but it also would have been good to have found a way to credit more of these co-presenters by name when relating their insights. In addition to practical suggestions, another strength of the book is the list of books and video presentations found at the end.
Having made a transition from a career serving white churches to now teaching at a black college, I’ve read many books on racism over the past few years. I don’t know of one that I can say has taught me more than White Fragility, and which has shown me how far I still have to go.
— Chris Caldwell is a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historic black college founded in 1879, and was one of the founders of Empower West, a coalition of African- American and white pastors in Louisville.
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