Overview

Overcoming White Fragility exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this book, antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'. While it's true that race is a scientific fiction, it is also a social reality. And while race is only one dimension of our complex identities, it is the one white Americans are least educated about. DiAngelo - who grew up white, urban, and poor in America - aims to raise the racial consciousness of white people, a group that usually feels exempt from the entire subject of race, and has historically refused to learn about its history and legacies of inequality. And so the first goal she urges us toward is to see the racism around us. While most of us think of racism in terms of individual acts, DiAngelo insists that racism is a structure, not an event . She defines racism not as conscious intolerance but as the ambient system of inequality we live in, have inherited, and, for white people, profit from. 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 exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

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