“Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility brings language to the emotional structures that make true discussions about racial attitudes difficult.” –Claudia Rankine (Reviewer)

As a white, liberal democrat, who grew up abroad and only came to the US as a teenager, I’ve often struggled with questions about race and racism. As a teenager, I had never been exposed to black American culture and I didn’t know what to think about it—so I didn’t. As a white Hispanic, I dated pretty much everyone from every culture, but didn’t think much beyond that. When serving in the military, I began to interact much more with people of color on a regular basis, but I truly believed, as many white people do, that because I was a ‘good’ person who believed that everyone was inherently equal, that it meant I couldn’t possibly be racist. During my life, I’ve had the luck to have good white friends call me out on some unconscious racist behavior (like calling my least favorite NFL quarterback a ‘thug’), and I responded with all the natural white fragility in the world—feeling attacked, attempting to justify my behavior, and attempting to reassure people that I was a ‘good’ person.

This is exactly what the book White Fragility is about, and it is so well-written, on such a delicate topic, that it will be hard to do it justice in a short review. To start off, this book is written by a white woman, for white people, based on the concept that fixing racism is a white people’s job, not a black people’s problem. I can attest that if you read this book with an open mind, truly desiring to learn how unconscious socialization has affected you throughout your life, and how you have inadvertently played into the racist power structure, you can read this book without being offended in the least, and it will set you on a path to begin to see racism around you as it has been—hiding in plain sight. As someone who has dedicated her life to understanding socialization and how it influences culture, this was the book I needed to read right now, and I hope you will too.

It’s also important to note, early on, that you can’t understand the argument without reading the book. It is so well done, and so intricate and delicate, that it is nearly impossible to summarize. The author has spent her life studying race-relations, unconscious bias, and power structures that affect us, and absolutely has a wealth of expertise to share. Her thesis can be summed up early in the book as, “The way we are taught to define racism, makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand it”. She goes on to explain that, “If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth.” This book is an extremely helpful tool for understanding the “phenomenon of white fragility, how we develop it, how it protects racial inequality, and what we might do about it”. (White Fragility, We Can’t Get There From Here, pg. 4-5)

At the very beginning of the book, the author explains how race shapes our world, and how we are normalized into ‘whiteness’ being ‘normal’ and everything else being ‘other’. She explains how socialization works, how it’s humanly impossible to not have prejudice, try as we might, it’s just the science of how brains work. Once we can accept the concept that we have all been socialized into a world where being white is beneficial and ‘normal’, then we can move onto understanding how this manifests. One of the key points to understanding the concept of white fragility comes next: understanding the good/bad binary that we operate under. Interestingly enough, the author uses sexism as an example, slightly easier to accept than racism, to explain some of her points, and I think that almost every concept in the book applies to the way we see sexism (I honestly hope that she’ll do a companion book called Male Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for Men to Discuss Sexism). Under the good/bad binary, we except that racists are bad people, while good people could never be racist. This is one of the ultimate reasons why it’s so hard for white people to talk about race and racism—we feel that if we admit we’ve been doing things wrong, then it means we are bad people. Since we naturally see ourselves as protagonists, we feel that any indication that we might be operating under racist patterns is an attack on our character, rather than an indictment of the society that socialized us. “We cannot understand modern forms of racism if we cannot or, will not, explore patterns of group behavior and their effects on individuals. (White Fragility, The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism, pg. 12).

Throughout the book, DiAngelo addresses nearly every possible rebuttal that white people have to the idea that racism exists, or the idea that they could possibly be racist, head on. Without the slightest accusatory tone, she masterfully outlines the reasons we feel this way, and suggests new ways of thinking about our reactions to racism being pointed out. The author uses real examples of ‘good’ people that she has encountered throughout decades of teaching unconscious bias and how they couldn’t see their own racism due to behavioral patterns in the society that we live in. She also uses her own, very personal examples of being confronted about racist behavior that she unconsciously displays (even after working on it for most of her adult life), and how she’s tried to learn to take the feedback in stride and consciously work to change her own behavior. Though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, the author manages to write about one of the most sensitive topics in our society for 160 pages, without ever once sounding like she is going on the attack. This book is extremely easy to read (if we can suspend our defensiveness) and a wonderful tool for us to examine our own behavior.

Though there are suggestions and many, many helpful concepts throughout the book, the final chapter lays it out clearly: where we go from here. As much as we might like, we can’t snap our fingers and make racism disappear. Racism is a system that underlies everything in our society and controls much of how our current world operates. She challenges white people to work on their ‘tolerance’ for having racism pointed out and discussed. She reminds us that as white people we are always ‘safe’ during discussions about racism, and it’s not the responsibility of people of color to make sure that any feedback (should they trust us enough to give it), is done in a ‘nice’ way. The expectation on marginalized groups to approach tearing down an oppressive system in a ‘nice’ way, in order to make those in power feel ‘safe’ is a big part of the problem of dismantling those systems, whether it be women talking about sexism accused of being ‘angry’, or black people talking about ‘racism’ accused of ‘attacking’.

In summary, I’ll leave you with a wonderful quote that I can’t stop thinking about. I think it’s a wonderful way to think of our (white people’s) role in modern racism, and what our level of responsibility is for the current state of things, and most importantly, for the future. “ I know that I have blind spots and unconscious investments in racism. My investments are reinforced every day in mainstream society. I did not set this system up, but it does unfairly benefit me, I do use it to my advantage, and I am responsible for interrupting it. I need to work hard to change my role in this system, but I can’t do it alone. This understanding leads me to gratitude when others help me.” (White Fragility, White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement, pg 126). For my part, I’m full of humility and gratitude to the author for opening my eyes to so much that I never realized, and I know I have a lot more work to do.

DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, THROUGH INNOVATIVE SAAS AND VIRTUAL CONSULTING. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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