Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Author’s Note
Introduction: We Can’t Get There from Here
1. The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
2. Racism and White Supremacy
3. Racism After the Civil Rights Movement
4. How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
5. The Good/Bad Binary
6. Anti-Blackness
7. Racial Triggers for White People
8. The Result: White Fragility
9. White Fragility in Action
10. White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
11. White Women’s Tears
12. Where Do We Go from Here?
Resources for Continuing Education
Acknowledgments
Notes
Copyright
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Guide
Cover
Copyright
Contents
1 The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
PRAISE FOR WHITE FRAGILITY
“White Fragility is a rare and incisive examination of the system of whitebody supremacy, which binds us all as Americans. Robin DiAngelo
explicates the underlying Western ideologies of individualism and
presumed objectivity that tighten those bonds. But she doesn’t just analyze
this system. With authenticity and clarity, she provides the antidote to white
fragility and a road map for developing white racial stamina and humility.
White Fragility loosens the bonds of white supremacy and binds us back
together as human beings.”
—RESMAA MENAKEM,
author of My Grandmother’s Hands and Rock the Boat
“What an amazingly powerful book Robin DiAngelo has written! This
remarkable book encourages folks to embrace a more deeply nuanced
exploration of white culture and dominance and, as such, will be a great
contribution in promoting the necessary policy change and healing that this
country requires. Dr. DiAngelo’s work in deconstructing whiteness is not
only brilliant, it is written in a way that is crystal clear and accessible to
each and every reader. While this is a powerful scholarly analysis of white
fragility, it is also an invitation to engage in deep personal inquiry and
collective change. As a woman of color, I find hope in this book because of
its potential to disrupt the patterns and relationships that have emerged out
of long-standing colonial principles and beliefs. White Fragility is an
essential tool toward authentic dialogue and action. May it be so!”
—SHAKTI BUTLER,
president of World Trust and director of Mirrors of Privilege: Making
Whiteness Visible
“As powerful forces of white racism again swell, DiAngelo invites white
progressives to have a courageous conversation about their culture of
complicity. To eradicate racism, she encourages white people to relinquish
ingrained hyper-attachment to individualism and embrace predictable
patterns of their own racial group. White Fragility provides important
antiracist understanding and essential strategies for well-intentioned white
people who truly endeavor to be a part of the solution.”
—GLENN E. SINGLETON,
author of Courageous Conversations About Race
“White fragility is the secret ingredient that makes racial conversations so
difficult and achieving racial equity even harder. But by exposing it and
showing us all—including white folks—how it operates and how it hurts us,
individually and collectively, Robin DiAngelo has performed an invaluable
service. An indispensable volume for understanding one of the most
important (and yet rarely appreciated) barriers to achieving racial justice.”
—TIM WISE,
author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
“In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo demonstrates an all-too-rare ability to
enter the racial conversation with complexity, nuance, and deep respect. Her
writing establishes her mastery in accessing the imaginal, metaphoric mind,
where the possibility for transformation resides. With an unwavering
conviction that change is possible, her message is clear: the incentive for
white engagement in racial justice work is ultimately self-liberation.”
—LETICIA NIETO,
coauthor of Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental
Strategy to Liberate Everyone
These ceremonials in honor of white supremacy,
performed from babyhood, slip from the
conscious mind down deep into muscles . . .
and become difficult to tear out.
—LILLIAN SMITH, Killers of the Dream (1949)
CONTENTS
Foreword by Michael Eric Dyson
Author’s Note
Introduction: We Can’t Get There from Here
1 The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism
2 Racism and White Supremacy
3 Racism After the Civil Rights Movement
4 How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
5 The Good/Bad Binary
6 Anti-Blackness
7 Racial Triggers for White People
8 The Result: White Fragility
9 White Fragility in Action
10 White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
11 White Women’s Tears
12 Where Do We Go from Here?
Resources for Continuing Education
Acknowledgments
Notes
FOREWORD
Keyser Söze, Beyoncé,
and the Witness Protection Program
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
One metaphor for race, and racism, won’t do. They are, after all,
exceedingly complicated forces. No, we need many metaphors, working in
concert, even if in different areas of the culture through a clever division of
linguistic labor. Race is a condition. A disease. A card. A plague. Original
sin. For much of American history, race has been black culture’s issue;
racism, a black person’s burden. Or substitute any person of color for black
and you’ve got the same problem. Whiteness, however, has remained
constant. In the equation of race, another metaphor for race beckons;
whiteness is the unchanging variable. Or, to shift metaphors, whiteness has
been, to pinch Amiri Baraka’s resonant phrase, the “changing same,” a
highly adaptable and fluid force that stays on top no matter where it lands.
In a sense, whiteness is at once the means of dominance, the end to which
dominance points, and the point of dominance, too, which, in its purest
form, in its greatest fantasy, never ends.
To be sure, like the rest of race, whiteness is a fiction, what in the jargon
of the academy is termed a social construct, an agreed-on myth that has
empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence. But whiteness goes even
one better: it is a category of identity that is most useful when its very
existence is denied. That’s its twisted genius. Whiteness embodies Charles
Baudelaire’s admonition that “the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade
you that he does not exist.” Or, as an alter ego of the character Keyser Söze
says in the film The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever
played was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.” The Devil. Racism.
Another metaphor. Same difference.
Robin DiAngelo is here to announce, in the words of evangelicals—and
rappers Rick Ross and Jay-Z—“The Devil Is a Lie.” Whiteness, like race,
may not be true—it’s not a biologically heritable characteristic that has
roots in physiological structures or in genes or chromosomes. But it is real,
in the sense that societies and rights and goods and resources and privileges
have been built on its foundation. DiAngelo brilliantly names a whiteness
that doesn’t want to be named, disrobes a whiteness that dresses in
camouflage as humanity, unmasks a whiteness costumed as American, and
fetches to center stage a whiteness that would rather hide in visible
invisibility.
It is not enough to be a rhetorician and a semiotician to deconstruct and
demythologize whiteness. One must be a magician of the political and the
social, an alchemist of the spiritual and psychological too. One must wave
off racist stereotypes and conjure a rich history of combatting white
supremacy and white privilege and white lies—a history that has often been
buried deep in the dark, rich, black American soil. DiAngelo knows that
what she is saying to white folk in this book is what so many black folks
have thought and believed and said over the years but couldn’t be heard
because white ears were too sensitive, white souls too fragile.
DiAngelo joins the front ranks of white antiracist thinkers with a stirring
call to conscience and, most important, consciousness in her white brothers
and sisters. White fragility is a truly generative idea; it is a crucial concept
that inspires us to think more deeply about how white folk understand their
whiteness and react defensively to being called to account for how that
whiteness has gone under the radar of race for far too long. DiAngelo is
wise and withering in her relentless assault on what Langston Hughes
termed “the ways of white folks.” But she is clear-eyed and unsentimental
in untangling the intertwined threads of social destiny and political
prescription that bind white identity to moral neutrality and cultural
universality.
DiAngelo bravely challenges the collapse of whiteness into national
identity. No less an authority than Beyoncé Knowles recently remarked,
“It’s been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism,
some assume we’re protesting America.” DiAngelo proves that Beyoncé is
right, that the flow of white identity into American identity—of racist
beliefs into national beliefs—must be met head-on with a full-throated
insistence that what it means to be American is not what it means to be
white, at least not exclusively, or even primarily. This nation is far more
complicated in its collective self-understanding. DiAngelo, in a masterly
way, takes apart the notion that identity politics is a scourge, at least when it
involves people of color or women. She blows down the house of white
racial cards built on the premise that it can, or should, rest on something
beyond identity politics.
DiAngelo forces us to see that all politics have rested on identities, and
that those identities are critical features of wrestling with how we have gone
wrong in the effort to set things right—which too often has meant make
them white. We cannot possibly name the nemeses of democracy or truth or
justice or equality if we cannot name the identities to which they have been
attached. For most of our history, straight white men have been involved in
a witness protection program that guards their identities and absolves them
of their crimes while offering them a future free of past encumbrances and
sins.
Robin DiAngelo is the new racial sheriff in town. She is bringing a
different law and order to bear upon the racial proceedings. Instead of
covering up for a whiteness that refused to face up to its benefits and
advantages, its errors and faults, she has sought to uphold the humanity of
the unjustly maligned while exposing the offenses of the undeservedly
celebrated.
White fragility is an idea whose time has come. It is an idea that registers
the hurt feelings, shattered egos, fraught spirits, vexed bodies, and taxed
emotions of white folk. In truth, their suffering comes from recognizing that
they are white—that their whiteness has given them a big leg up in life
while crushing others’ dreams, that their whiteness is the clearest example
of the identity politics they claim is harmful to the nation, and that their
whiteness has shielded them from growing up as quickly as they might have
done had they not so heavily leaned on it to make it through life. White
Fragility is a vital, necessary, and beautiful book, a bracing call to white
folk everywhere to see their whiteness for what it is and to seize the
opportunity to make things better now. Robin DiAngelo kicks all the
crutches to the side and demands that white folk finally mature and face the
world they’ve made while seeking to help remake it for those who have
neither their privilege nor their protection.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
IDENTITY POLITICS
The United States was founded on the principle that all people are created
equal. Yet the nation began with the attempted genocide of Indigenous
people and the theft of their land. American wealth was built on the labor of
kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants. Women were
denied the right to vote until 1920, and black women were denied access to
that right until 1964. The term identity politics refers to the focus on the
barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality. We have yet to
achieve our founding principle, but any gains we have made thus far have
come through identity politics.
The identities of those sitting at the tables of power in this country have
remained remarkably similar: white, male, middle- and upper-class, ablebodied. Acknowledging this fact may be dismissed as political correctness,
but it is still a fact. The decisions made at those tables affect the lives of
those not at the tables. Exclusion by those at the table doesn’t depend on
willful intent; we don’t have to intend to exclude for the results of our
actions to be exclusion. While implicit bias is always at play because all
humans have bias, inequity can occur simply through homogeneity; if I am
not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be
motivated to remove them. Nor will I be motivated to remove the barriers if
they provide an advantage to which I feel entitled.
All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been
accomplished through identity politics: women’s suffrage, the American
with Disabilities Act, Title 9, federal recognition of same-sex marriage. A
key issue in the 2016 presidential election was the white working class.
These are all manifestations of identity politics.
Take women’s suffrage. If being a woman denies you the right to vote,
you ipso facto cannot grant it to yourself. And you certainly cannot vote for
your right to vote. If men control all the mechanisms that exclude women
from voting as well as the mechanisms that can reverse that exclusion,
women must call on men for justice. You could not have had a conversation
about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming
women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those
who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the
controlling group is universal. For example, although we are taught that
women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white
women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it.
Not until the 1960s, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women—
regardless of race—granted full access to suffrage. Naming who has access
and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice.
This book is unapologetically rooted in identity politics. I am white and am
addressing a common white dynamic. I am mainly writing to a white
audience; when I use the terms us and we, I am referring to the white
collective. This usage may be jarring to white readers because we are so
rarely asked to think about ourselves or fellow whites in racial terms. But
rather than retreat in the face of that discomfort, we can practice building
our stamina for the critical examination of white identity—a necessary
antidote to white fragility. This raises another issue rooted in identity
politics: in speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am
yet again centering white people and the white voice. I have not found a
way around this dilemma, for as an insider I can speak to the white
experience in ways that may be harder to deny. So, though I am centering
the white voice, I am also using my insider status to challenge racism. To
not use my position this way is to uphold racism, and that is unacceptable; it
is a “both/and” that I must live with. I would never suggest that mine is the
only voice that should be heard, only that it is one of the many pieces
needed to solve the overall puzzle.
People who do not identify as white may also find this book helpful for
understanding why it is so often difficult to talk to white people about
racism. People of color cannot avoid understanding white consciousness to
some degree if they are to be successful in this society, yet nothing in
dominant culture affirms their understanding or validates their frustrations
when they interact with white people. I hope that this exploration affirms
the cross-racial experiences of people of color and provides some useful
insight.
This book looks at the United States and the general context of the West
(United States, Canada, and Europe). It does not address nuances and
variations within other sociopolitical settings. However, these patterns have
also been observed in white people in other white settler societies such as
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
WHAT ABOUT MULTIRACIAL PEOPLE?
Throughout this book, I argue that racism is deeply complex and nuanced,
and given this, we can never consider our learning to be complete or
finished. One example of this complexity is in the very use of the racial
categories “white” and “people of color.” I use the terms white and people
of color to indicate the two macro-level, socially recognized divisions of the
racial hierarchy. Yet in using these terms, I am collapsing a great deal of
variation. And though I believe (for reasons explained in chapter 1) that
temporarily suspending individuality to focus on group identity is healthy
for white people, doing so has very different impacts on people of color. For
multiracial people in particular, these binary categories leave them in a
frustrating “middle.”
Multiracial people, because they challenge racial constructs and
boundaries, face unique challenges in a society in which racial categories
have profound meaning. The dominant society will assign them the racial
identity they most physically resemble, but their own internal racial identity
may not align with the assigned identity. For example, though the musician
Bob Marley was multiracial, society perceived him as black and thus
responded to him as if he were black. When multiracial people’s racial
identity is ambiguous, they will face constant pressure to explain
themselves and “choose a side.” Racial identity for multiracial people is
further complicated by the racial identity of their parents and the racial
demographics of the community in which they are raised. For example,
though a child may look black and be treated as black, she may be raised
primarily by a white parent and thus identify more strongly as white.
The dynamics of what is termed “passing”—being perceived as white—
will also shape a multiracial person’s identity, as passing will grant him or
her society’s rewards of whiteness. However, people of mixed racial
heritage who pass as white may also experience resentment and isolation
from people of color who cannot pass. Multiracial people may not be seen
as “real” people of color or “real” whites. (It is worth noting that though the
term “passing” refers to the ability to blend in as a white person, there is no
corresponding term for the ability to pass as a person of color. This
highlights the fact that, in a racist society, the desired direction is always
toward whiteness and away from being perceived as a person of color.)
I will not be able to do justice to the complexity of multiracial identity.
But for the purposes of grappling with white fragility, I offer multiracial
people the concept of saliency. We all occupy multiple and intersecting
social positionalities. I am white, but I am also a cisgender woman, ablebodied, and middle-aged. These identities don’t cancel out one another;
each is more or less salient in different contexts. For example, in a group in
which I am the only woman, gender will likely be very salient for me.
When I am in a group that is all white except for one person of color, race
will likely be my most salient identity. As you read, it will be for you to
decide what speaks to your experience and what doesn’t, and in what
contexts. My hope is that you may gain insight into why people who
identify as white are so difficult in conversations regarding race and/or gain
insight into your own racial responses as you navigate the roiling racial
waters of daily life.
INTRODUCTION
WE CAN’T GET
THERE FROM HERE
I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a
group of white people seated in front of us. We are in their workplace and
have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race.
The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just
presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that
whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man
is pounding his fist on the table. As he pounds, he yells, “A white person
can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see forty employees,
thirty-eight of whom are white. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he
being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why doesn’t he notice the
effect this outburst is having on the few people of color in the room? Why
are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or
tuning out? I have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism.
White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and
unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation
and inequality. As a result, we are insulated from racial stress, at the same
time that we come to feel entitled to and deserving of our advantage. Given
how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we
haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized
sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to
ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We
consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very
identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect
us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The
smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable—the mere suggestion that
being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses.
These include emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as
argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.
These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the
challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the
racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility. Though
white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of
superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it
is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white
advantage.
Summarizing the familiar patterns of white people’s responses to racial
discomfort as white fragility has resonated for many people. The sensibility
is so familiar because whereas our personal narratives vary, we are all
swimming in the same racial water. For me, the recognition has come
through my work. I have a rare job; on a daily basis I lead primarily white
audiences in discussions of race, something many of us avoid at all costs.
In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer,
I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people
became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way.
The very idea that they would be required to attend a workshop on racism
outraged them. They entered the room angry and made that feeling clear to
us throughout the day as they slammed their notebooks down on the table,
refused to participate in exercises, and argued against any and all points.
I couldn’t understand their resentment or disinterest in learning more
about such a complex social dynamic as racism. These reactions were
especially perplexing when there were few or no people of color in their
workplace, and they had the opportunity to learn from my cofacilitators of
color. I assumed that in these circumstances, an educational workshop on
racism would be appreciated. After all, didn’t the lack of diversity indicate a
problem or at least suggest that some perspectives were missing? Or that
the participants might be undereducated about race because of scant crossracial interactions?
It took me several years to see beneath these reactions. At first I was
intimidated by them, and they held me back and kept me careful and quiet.
But over time, I began to see what lay beneath this anger and resistance to
discuss race or listen to people of color. I observed consistent responses
from a variety of participants. For example, many white participants who
lived in white suburban neighborhoods and had no sustained relationships
with people of color were absolutely certain that they held no racial
prejudice or animosity. Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a
matter of nice people versus mean people. Most appeared to believe that
racism ended in 1865 with the end of slavery. There was both knee-jerk
defensiveness about any suggestion that being white had meaning and a
refusal to acknowledge any advantage to being white. Many participants
claimed white people were now the oppressed group, and they deeply
resented anything perceived to be a form of affirmative action. These
responses were so predictable—so consistent and reliable—I was able to
stop taking the resistance personally, get past my own conflict avoidance,
and reflect on what was behind them.
I began to see what I think of as the pillars of whiteness—the
unexamined beliefs that prop up our racial responses. I could see the power
of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism
allowed white people to exempt themselves from the forces of socialization.
I could see how we are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts
committed by individual people, rather than as a complex, interconnected
system. And in light of so many white expressions of resentment toward
people of color, I realized that we see ourselves as entitled to, and deserving
of, more than people of color deserve; I saw our investment in a system that
serves us. I also saw how hard we worked to deny all this and how
defensive we became when these dynamics were named. In turn, I saw how
our defensiveness maintained the racial status quo.
Personal reflections on my own racism, a more critical view of media and
other aspects of culture, and exposure to the perspectives of many brilliant
and patient mentors of color all helped me to see how these pillars of racism
worked. It became clear that if I believed that only bad people who intended
to hurt others because of race could ever do so, I would respond with
outrage to any suggestion that I was involved in racism. Of course that
belief would make me feel falsely accused of something terrible, and of
course I would want to defend my character (and I had certainly had many
of my own moments of responding in just those ways to reflect on). I came
to see that the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually
impossible for white people to understand it. Given our racial insulation,
coupled with misinformation, any suggestion that we are complicit in
racism is a kind of unwelcome and insulting shock to the system.
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. One of the greatest social fears for a white
person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially
problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have just done such a
thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we
are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and
denial. Such moments can be experienced as something valuable, even if
temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that
it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial
assumptions and behaviors.
None of the white people whose actions I describe in this book would
identify as racist. In fact, they would most likely identify as racially
progressive and vehemently deny any complicity with racism. Yet all their
responses illustrate white fragility and how it holds racism in place. These
responses spur the daily frustrations and indignities people of color endure
from white people who see themselves as open-minded and thus not racist.
This book is intended for us, for white progressives who so often—despite
our conscious intentions—make life so difficult for people of color. I
believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of
color. I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she
is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir,” or already “gets it.” White
progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the
degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making
sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into
what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing selfawareness, continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist
practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but
our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us
how we do so.
Racism has been among the most complex social dilemmas since the
founding of this country. While there is no biological race as we understand
it (see chapter 2), race as a social construct has profound significance and
shapes every aspect of our lives.1 Race will influence whether we will
survive our birth, where we are most likely to live, which schools we will
attend, who our friends and partners will be, what careers we will have,
how much money we will earn, how healthy we will be, and even how long
we can expect to live.2 This book does not attempt to provide the solution to
racism. Nor does it attempt to prove that racism exists; I start from that
premise. My goal is to make visible how one aspect of white sensibility
continues to hold racism in place: white fragility.
I will explain the phenomenon of white fragility, how we develop it, how
it protects racial inequality, and what we might do about it.
CHAPTER 1
THE CHALLENGES OF TALKING TO WHITE
PEOPLE ABOUT RACISM
WE DON’T SEE OURSELVES IN RACIAL TERMS
I am a white American raised in the United States. I have a white frame of
reference and a white worldview, and I move through the world with a
white experience. My experience is not a universal human experience. It is
a particularly white experience in a society in which race matters
profoundly; a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. However,
like most white people raised in the US, I was not taught to see myself in
racial terms and certainly not to draw attention to my race or to behave as if
it mattered in any way. Of course, I was made aware that somebody’s race
mattered, and if race was discussed, it would be theirs, not mine. Yet a
critical component of cross-racial skill building is the ability to sit with the
discomfort of being seen racially, of having to proceed as if our race matters
(which it does). Being seen racially is a common trigger of white fragility,
and thus, to build our stamina, white people must face the first challenge:
naming our race.
OUR OPINIONS ARE UNINFORMED
I have never met a white person without an opinion on racism. It’s not
really possible to grow up in the United States or spend any significant time
here—or any other culture with a history of Western colonization—without
developing opinions on racism. And white people’s opinions on racism tend
to be strong. Yet race relations are profoundly complex. We must be willing
to consider that unless we have devoted intentional and ongoing study, our
opinions are necessarily uninformed, even ignorant. How can I say that if
you are white, your opinions on racism are most likely ignorant, when I
don’t even know you? I can say so because nothing in mainstream US
culture gives us the information we need to have the nuanced understanding
of arguably the most complex and enduring social dynamic of the last
several hundred years.
For example, I can be seen as qualified to lead a major or minor
organization in this country with no understanding whatsoever of the
perspectives or experiences of people of color, few if any relationships with
people of color, and virtually no ability to engage critically with the topic of
race. I can get through graduate school without ever discussing racism. I
can graduate from law school without ever discussing racism. I can get
through a teacher-education program without ever discussing racism. If I
am in a program considered progressive, I might have a single required
“diversity” course. A handful of faculty will have fought for years to get me
this course, likely having had to overcome resistance from the majority of
their white colleagues, and will still be fighting to keep the course. In this
diversity course, we might read “ethnic” authors and learn about heroes and
heroines from various groups of color, but there’s no guarantee we’ll
discuss racism.
In fact, when we try to talk openly and honestly about race, white
fragility quickly emerges as we are so often met with silence,
defensiveness, argumentation, certitude, and other forms of pushback.
These are not natural responses; they are social forces that prevent us from
attaining the racial knowledge we need to engage more productively, and
they function powerfully to hold the racial hierarchy in place. These forces
include the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy, narrow and
repetitive media representations of people of color, segregation in schools
and neighborhoods, depictions of whiteness as the human ideal, truncated
history, jokes and warnings, taboos on openly talking about race, and white
solidarity.
Interrupting the forces of racism is ongoing, lifelong work because the
forces conditioning us into racist frameworks are always at play; our
learning will never be finished. Yet our simplistic definition of racism—as
intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals
—engenders a confidence that we are not part of the problem and that our
learning is thus complete. The claims we offer up as evidence are
implausible. For example, perhaps you’ve heard someone say “I was taught
to treat everyone the same” or “People just need to be taught to respect one
another, and that begins in the home.” These statements tend to end the
discussion and the learning that could come from sustained engagement.
Further, they are unconvincing to most people of color and only invalidate
their experiences. Many white people simply do not understand the process
of socialization, and this is our next challenge.
WE DON’T UNDERSTAND SOCIALIZATION
When I talk to white people about racism, their responses are so predictable
I sometimes feel as though we are all reciting lines from a shared script.
And on some level, we are, because we are actors in a shared culture. A
significant aspect of the white script derives from our seeing ourselves as
both objective and unique. To understand white fragility, we have to begin
to understand why we cannot fully be either; we must understand the forces
of socialization.
We make sense of perceptions and experiences through our particular
cultural lens. This lens is neither universal nor objective, and without it, a
person could not function in any human society. But exploring these
cultural frameworks can be particularly challenging in Western culture
precisely because of two key Western ideologies: individualism and
objectivity. Briefly, individualism holds that we are each unique and stand
apart from others, even those within our social groups. Objectivity tells us
that it is possible to be free of all bias. These ideologies make it very
difficult for white people to explore the collective aspects of the white
experience.
Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and
reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our
group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our
opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to
individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures
but comes from individual character. According to the ideology of
individualism, race is irrelevant. Of course, we do occupy distinct race,
gender, class, and other positions that profoundly shape our life chances in
ways that are not natural, voluntary, or random; opportunity is not equally
distributed across race, class, and gender. On some level, we know that Bill
Gates’s son was born into a set of opportunities that will benefit him
throughout his life, whether he is mediocre or exceptional. Yet even though
Gates’s son has clearly been handed unearned advantage, we cling tightly to
the ideology of individualism when asked to consider our own unearned
advantages.
Regardless of our protestations that social groups don’t matter and that
we see everyone as equal, we know that to be a man as defined by the
dominant culture is a different experience from being a woman. We know
that to be viewed as old is different from being viewed as young, rich is
different from poor, able-bodied different from having a disability, gay
different from heterosexual, and so on. These groups matter, but they don’t
matter naturally, as we are often taught to believe. Rather, we are taught that
they matter, and the social meaning ascribed to these groups creates a
difference in lived experience. We are taught these social meanings in
myriad ways, by a range of people, and through a variety of mediums. This
training continues after childhood and throughout our lives. Much of it is
nonverbal and is achieved through watching and comparing ourselves to
others.
We are socialized into these groups collectively. In mainstream culture,
we all receive the same messages about what these groups mean, why being
in one group is a different experience from being in another. And we also
know that it is “better” to be in one of these groups than to be in its opposite
—for example, to be young rather than old, able-bodied rather than have a
disability, rich rather than poor. We gain our understanding of group
meaning collectively through aspects of the society around us that are
shared and unavoidable: television, movies, news items, song lyrics,
magazines, textbooks, schools, religion, literature, stories, jokes, traditions
and practices, history, and so on. These dimensions of our culture shape our
group identities.
Our understanding of ourselves is necessarily based on our comparisons
with others. The concept of pretty has no meaning without the concept of
ugly, smart means little without the idea of not-smart or “stupid,” and
deserving has no meaning without the concept of undeserving. We come to
understand who we are by understanding who we are not. But because of
our society’s emphasis on individuality, many of us are unskilled at
reflecting on our group memberships. To understand race relations today,
we must push against our conditioning and grapple with how and why
racial group memberships matter.
In addition to challenging our sense of ourselves as individuals, tackling
group identity also challenges our belief in objectivity. If group membership
is relevant, then we don’t see the world from the universal human
perspective but from the perspective of a particular kind of human. In this
way, both ideologies are disrupted. Thus, reflecting on our racial frames is
particularly challenging for many white people, because we are taught that
to have a racial viewpoint is to be biased. Unfortunately, this belief protects
our biases, because denying that we have them ensures that we won’t
examine or change them. This will be important to remember when we
consider our racial socialization, because there is a vast difference between
what we verbally tell our children and all the other ways we train them into
the racial norms of our culture.
For many white people, the mere title of this book will cause resistance
because I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism—I am generalizing.
I am proceeding as if I could know anything about someone just because
the person is white. Right now you may be thinking of all the ways that you
are different from other white people and that if I just knew how you had
come to this country, or were close to these people, grew up in this
neighborhood, endured this struggle, or had this experience, then I would
know that you were different—that you were not racist. I’ve witnessed this
common reflex countless times in my work.
For example, I recently gave a talk to a group of about two hundred
employees. There were no more than five people of color in their
organization, and of these five, only two were African American. Over and
over, I emphasized the importance of white people having racial humility
and of not exempting ourselves from the unavoidable dynamics of racism.
As soon as I was done speaking, a line of white people formed—ostensibly
to ask me questions—but more typically to reiterate the same opinions on
race they held when they had entered the room. The first in line was a white
man who explained that he was Italian American and that Italians were
once considered black and discriminated against, so didn’t I think that white
people experience racism too? That he could be in that overwhelmingly
white room of coworkers and exempt himself from an examination of his
whiteness because Italians were once discriminated against is an all-toocommon example of individualism. A more fruitful form of engagement
(because it expands rather than protects his current worldview) would have
been to consider how Italian Americans were able to become white and
how that assimilation has shaped his experiences in the present as a white
man. His claims did not illustrate that he was different from other white
people when it comes to race. I can predict that many readers will make
similar claims of exception precisely because we are products of our
culture, not separate from it.
As a sociologist, I am quite comfortable generalizing; social life is
patterned and predictable in measurable ways. But I understand that my
generalizations may cause some defensiveness for the white people about
whom I am generalizing, given how cherished the ideology of
individualism is in our culture. There are, of course, exceptions, but patterns
are recognized as such precisely because they are recurring and predictable.
We cannot understand modern forms of racism if we cannot or will not
explore patterns of group behavior and their effects on individuals. I ask
readers to make the specific adjustments they think are necessary to their
situation, rather than reject the evidence entirely. For example, perhaps you
grew up in poverty, or are an Ashkenazi Jew of European heritage, or were
raised in a military family. Perhaps you grew up in Canada, Hawaii, or
Germany, or had people of color in your family. None of these situations
exempts you from the forces of racism, because no aspect of society is
outside of these forces.
Rather than use what you see as unique about yourself as an exemption
from further examination, a more fruitful approach would be to ask
yourself, “I am white and I have had X experience. How did X shape me as
a result of also being white?” Setting aside your sense of uniqueness is a
critical skill that will allow you to see the big picture of the society in which
we live; individualism will not. For now, try to let go of your individual
narrative and grapple with the collective messages we all receive as
members of a larger shared culture. Work to see how these messages have
shaped your life, rather than use some aspect of your story to excuse
yourself from their impact.
WE HAVE A SIMPLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF RACISM
The final challenge we need to address is our definition of “racist.” In the
post–civil rights era, we have been taught that racists are mean people who
intentionally dislike others because of their race; racists are immoral.
Therefore, if I am saying that my readers are racist or, even worse, that all
white people are racist, I am saying something deeply offensive; I am
questioning my readers’ very moral character. How can I make this claim
when I don’t even know my readers? Many of you have friends and loved
ones of color, so how can you be racist? In fact, since it’s racist to
generalize about people according to race, I am the one being racist! So let
me be clear: If your definition of a racist is someone who holds conscious
dislike of people because of race, then I agree that it is offensive for me to
suggest that you are racist when I don’t know you. I also agree that if this is
your definition of racism, and you are against racism, then you are not
racist. Now breathe. I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not
saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my
argument, it should soon begin to make sense.
In light of the challenges raised here, I expect that white readers will
have moments of discomfort reading this book. This feeling may be a sign
that I’ve managed to unsettle the racial status quo, which is my goal. The
racial status quo is comfortable for white people, and we will not move
forward in race relations if we remain comfortable. The key to moving
forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—
blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door
in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this
were true? How does this lens change my understanding of racial
dynamics? How can my unease help reveal the unexamined assumptions I
have been making? Is it possible that because I am white, there are some
racial dynamics that I can’t see? Am I willing to consider that possibility? If
I am not willing to do so, then why not?
If you are reading this and are still making your case for why you are
different from other white people and why none of this applies to you, stop
and take a breath. Now return to the questions above, and keep working
through them. To interrupt white fragility, we need to build our capacity to
sustain the discomfort of not knowing, the discomfort of being racially
unmoored, the discomfort of racial humility. Our next task is to understand
how the forces of racial socialization are constantly at play. The inability to
acknowledge these forces inevitably leads to the resistance and
defensiveness of white fragility. To increase the racial stamina that counters
white fragility, we must reflect on the whole of our identities—and our
racial group identity in particular. For white people, this means first
struggling with what it means to be white.
CHAPTER 2
RACISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY
Many of us have been taught to believe that there are distinct biological and
genetic differences between races. This biology accounts for visual
differences such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape, and traits that we
believe we see such as sexuality, athleticism, or mathematical ability. The
idea of race as a biological construct makes it easy to believe that many of
the divisions we see in society are natural. But race, like gender, is socially
constructed. The differences we see with our eyes—differences such as hair
texture and eye color—are superficial and emerged as adaptations to
geography.1 Under the skin, there is no true biological race. The external
characteristics that we use to define race are unreliable indicators of genetic
variation between any two people.2
However, the belief that race and the differences associated with it are
biological is deep-seated. To challenge the belief in race as biology, we
need to understand the social and economic investments that drove science
to organize society and its resources along racial lines and why this
organization is so enduring.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE IN THE UNITED STATES
Freedom and equality—regardless of religion or class status—were radical
new ideas when the United States was formed. At the same time, the US
economy was based on the abduction and enslavement of African people,
the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people, and the annexation of
Mexican lands. Further, the colonizers who came were not free of their own
cultural conditioning; they brought with them deeply internalized patterns
of domination and submission.3
The tension between the noble ideology of equality and the cruel reality
of genocide, enslavement, and colonization had to be reconciled. Thomas
Jefferson (who himself owned hundreds of enslaved people) and others
turned to science. Jefferson suggested that there were natural differences
between the races and asked scientists to find them.4 If science could prove
that black people were naturally and inherently inferior (he saw Indigenous
people as culturally deficient—a shortcoming that could be remedied), there
would be no contradiction between our professed ideals and our actual
practices. There were, of course, enormous economic interests in justifying
enslavement and colonization. Race science was driven by these social and
economic interests, which came to establish cultural norms and legal rulings
that legitimized racism and the privileged status of those defined as white.
Drawing on the work of Europeans before them, American scientists
began searching for the answer to the perceived inferiority of non-Anglo
groups. Illustrating the power of our questions to shape the knowledge we
validate, these scientists didn’t ask, “Are blacks (and others) inferior?”
They asked, “Why are blacks (and others) inferior?” In less than a century,
Jefferson’s suggestion of racial difference became commonly accepted
scientific “fact.”5
The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment;
belief in racial inferiority is not what triggered unequal treatment. Nor was
fear of difference. As Ta-Nehisi Coates states, “But race is the child of
racism, not the father.”6 He means that first we exploited people for their
resources, not according to how they looked. Exploitation came first, and
then the ideology of unequal races to justify this exploitation followed.
Similarly, historian Ibram Kendi, in his National Book Award–winning
work Stamped from the Beginning, explains: “The beneficiaries of slavery,
segregation, and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of Black
people being best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery,
segregation, or the jail cell. Consumers of these racist ideas have been led to
believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies
that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.”7 Kendi
goes on to argue that if we truly believe that all humans are equal, then
disparity in condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination.
THE PERCEPTION OF RACE
Race is an evolving social idea that was created to legitimize racial
inequality and protect white advantage. The term “white” first appeared in
colonial law in the late 1600s. By 1790, people were asked to claim their
race on the census, and by 1825, the perceived degrees of blood determined
who would be classified as Indian. From the late 1800s through the early
twentieth century, as waves of immigrants entered the United States, the
concept of a white race was solidified.8
When slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, whiteness
remained profoundly important as legalized racist exclusion and violence
against African Americans continued in new forms. To have citizenship—
and the rights citizenship imbued—you had to be legally classified as white.
People with nonwhite racial classifications began to petition the courts to be
reclassified. Now the courts were in the position to decide who was white
and who was not. For example, Armenians won their case to be reclassified
as white with the help of a scientific witness who claimed they were
scientifically “Caucasian.” In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that the
Japanese could not be legally white, because they were scientifically
classified as “Mongoloid.” A year later, the court stated that Asian Indians
were not legally white, even though they were also scientifically classified
as “Caucasian.” To justify these contradictory rulings, the court stated that
being white was based on the common understanding of the white man. In
other words, people already seen as white got to decide who was white.9
The metaphor of the United States as the great melting pot, in which
immigrants from around the world come together and melt into one unified
society through the process of assimilation, is a cherished idea. Once new
immigrants learn English and adapt to American culture and customs, they
become Americans. In reality, only European immigrants were allowed to
melt, or assimilate, into dominant culture in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, because, regardless of their ethnic identities, these immigrants
were perceived to be white and thus could belong.
Race is a social construction, and thus who is included in the category of
white changes over time. As the Italian American man from my workshop
noted, European ethnic groups such as the Irish, Italian, and Polish were
excluded in the past. But where they may have been originally divided in
terms of origin, European immigrants became racially united through
assimilation.10 This process of assimilation—speaking English, eating
“American” foods, discarding customs that set them apart—reified the
perception of American as white. Racial identification in the larger society
plays a fundamental role in identity development, in how we see ourselves.
If we “look white,” we are treated as white in society at large. For
example, people of southern European heritage, such as Spanish or
Portuguese, or from the former Soviet Union, especially if they are new
immigrants or were raised by immigrants, are likely to have a stronger
sense of ethnic identity than will someone of the same ethnicity whose
ancestors have been here for generations. Yet although their internal identity
may be different, if they “pass” as white, they will still have a white
experience externally. If they look white, the default assumption will be that
they are white and thus they will be responded to as white. The incongruity
between their internal ethnic identity (e.g., Portuguese, Spanish) and
external racial experience (white) would provide a more complex or
nuanced sense of identity than that of someone who doesn’t have a strong
ethnic identity. However, they are still granted white status and the
advantages that come with that status. Today, these advantages are de facto
rather than de jure, but are nonetheless powerful in shaping our daily lives.
It is on each of us who pass as white to identify how these advantages shape
us, not to deny them wholescale.
Because race is a product of social forces, it has also manifested itself
along class lines; poor and working-class people were not always perceived
as fully white.11 In a society that grants fewer opportunities to those not
seen as white, economic and racial forces are inseparable. However, poor
and working-class whites were eventually granted full entry into whiteness
as a way to exploit labor. If poor whites were focused on feeling superior to
those below them in status, they were less focused on those above. The poor
and working classes, if united across race, could be a powerful force. But
racial divisions have served to keep them from organizing against the
owning class who profits from their labor.12 Still, although working-class
whites experience classism, they aren’t also experiencing racism. I grew up
in poverty and felt a deep sense of shame about being poor. But I also
always knew that I was white, and that it was better to be white.
RACISM
To understand racism, we need to first distinguish it from mere prejudice
and discrimination. Prejudice is pre-judgment about another person based
on the social groups to which that person belongs. Prejudice consists of
thoughts and feelings, including stereotypes, attitudes, and generalizations
that are based on little or no experience and then are projected onto
everyone from that group. Our prejudices tend to be shared because we
swim in the same cultural water and absorb the same messages.
All humans have prejudice; we cannot avoid it. If I am aware that a social
group exists, I will have gained information about that group from the
society around me. This information helps me make sense of the group
from my cultural framework. People who claim not to be prejudiced are
demonstrating a profound lack of self-awareness. Ironically, they are also
demonstrating the power of socialization—we have all been taught in
schools, through movies, and from family members, teachers, and clergy
that it is important not to be prejudiced. Unfortunately, the prevailing belief
that prejudice is bad causes us to deny its unavoidable reality.
Prejudice is foundational to understanding white fragility because
suggesting that white people have racial prejudice is perceived as saying
that we are bad and should be ashamed. We then feel the need to defend our
character rather than explore the inevitable racial prejudices we have
absorbed so that we might change them. In this way, our misunderstanding
about what prejudice is protects it.
Discrimination is action based on prejudice. These actions include
ignoring, exclusion, threats, ridicule, slander, and violence. For example, if
hatred is the emotion we feel because of our prejudice, extreme acts of
discrimination, such as violence, may follow. These forms of discrimination
are generally clear and recognizable. But if what we feel is more subtle,
such as mild discomfort, the discrimination is likely to also be subtle, even
hard to detect. Most of us can acknowledge that we do feel some unease
around certain groups of people, if only a heightened sense of selfconsciousness. But this feeling doesn’t come naturally. Our unease comes
from living separate from a group of people while simultaneously absorbing
incomplete or erroneous information about them. When the prejudice
causes me to act differently—I am less relaxed around you or I avoid
interacting with you—I am now discriminating. Prejudice always manifests
itself in action because the way I see the world drives my actions in the
world. Everyone has prejudice, and everyone discriminates. Given this
reality, inserting the qualifier “reverse” is nonsensical.
When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of
legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a farreaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-
images of individual actors. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, professor of American
studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, explains, “Racism is a
structure, not an event.”13 American women’s struggle for suffrage
illustrates how institutional power transforms prejudice and discrimination
into structures of oppression. Everyone has prejudice and discriminates, but
structures of oppression go well beyond individuals. While women could be
prejudiced and discriminate against men in individual interactions, women
as a group could not deny men their civil rights. But men as a group could
and did deny women their civil rights. Men could do so because they
controlled all the institutions. Therefore, the only way women could gain
suffrage was for men to grant it to them; women could not grant suffrage to
themselves.
Similarly, racism—like sexism and other forms of oppression—occurs
when a racial group’s prejudice is backed by legal authority and
institutional control. This authority and control transforms individual
prejudices into a far-reaching system that no longer depends on the good
intentions of individual actors; it becomes the default of the society and is
reproduced automatically. Racism is a system. And I would be remiss if I
did not acknowledge the intersection of race and gender in the example of
suffrage; white men granted suffrage to women, but only granted full access
to white women. Women of color were denied full access until the Voting
Rights Act of 1964.
The system of racism begins with ideology, which refers to the big ideas
that are reinforced throughout society. From birth, we are conditioned into
accepting and not questioning these ideas. Ideology is reinforced across
society, for example, in schools and textbooks, political speeches, movies,
advertising, holiday celebrations, and words and phrases. These ideas are
also reinforced through social penalties when someone questions an
ideology and through the limited availability of alternative ideas. Ideologies
are the frameworks through which we are taught to represent, interpret,
understand, and make sense of social existence.14 Because these ideas are
constantly reinforced, they are very hard to avoid believing and
internalizing. Examples of ideology in the United States include
individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and
democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and
meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard).
The racial ideology that circulates in the United States rationalizes racial
hierarchies as the outcome of a natural order resulting from either genetics
or individual effort or talent. Those who don’t succeed are just not as
naturally capable, deserving, or hardworking. Ideologies that obscure
racism as a system of inequality are perhaps the most powerful racial forces
because once we accept our positions within racial hierarchies, these
positions seem natural and difficult to question, even when we are
disadvantaged by them. In this way, very little external pressure needs to be
applied to keep people in their places; once the rationalizations for
inequality are internalized, both sides will uphold the relationship.
Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of our society. It is not limited
to a single act or person. Nor does it move back and forth, one day
benefiting whites and another day (or even era) benefiting people of color.
The direction of power between white people and people of color is
historic, traditional, and normalized in ideology. Racism differs from
individual racial prejudice and racial discrimination in the historical
accumulation and ongoing use of institutional power and authority to
support the prejudice and to systematically enforce discriminatory
behaviors with far-reaching effects.
People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white
people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their
prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on
whites is temporary and contextual. Whites hold the social and institutional
positions in society to infuse their racial prejudice into the laws, policies,
practices, and norms of society in a way that people of color do not. A
person of color may refuse to wait on me if I enter a shop, but people of
color cannot pass legislation that prohibits me and everyone like me from
buying a home in a certain neighborhood.
People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against their
own and other groups of color, but this bias ultimately holds them down
and, in this way, reinforces the system of racism that still benefits whites.
Racism is a society-wide dynamic that occurs at the group level. When I
say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only
whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over
people of color. People of color do not have this power and privilege over
white people.
Many whites see racism as a thing of the past, and of course, we are well
served not to acknowledge it in the present. Yet racial disparity between
whites and people of color continues to exist in every institution across
society, and in many cases is increasing rather than decreasing. Although
segregation may make these disparities difficult for whites to see and easy
to deny, racial disparities and their effects on overall quality of life have
been extensively documented by a wide range of agencies. Among those
documenting these challenges are the US Census Bureau, the United
Nations, academic groups such as the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the
Metropolis Project, and nonprofits such as the NAACP and the AntiDefamation League.15
Scholar Marilyn Frye uses the metaphor of a birdcage to describe the
interlocking forces of oppression.16 If you stand close to a birdcage and
press your face against the wires, your perception of the bars will disappear
and you will have an almost unobstructed view of the bird. If you turn your
head to examine one wire of the cage closely, you will not be able to see the
other wires. If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view,
you may not understand why the bird doesn’t just go around the single wire
and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place
in the cage.
But if you stepped back and took a wider view, you would begin to see
that the wires come together in an interlocking pattern—a pattern that
works to hold the bird firmly in place. It now becomes clear that a network
of systematically related barriers surrounds the bird. Taken individually,
none of these barriers would be that difficult for the bird to get around, but
because they interlock with each other, they thoroughly restrict the bird.
While some birds may escape from the cage, most will not. And certainly
those that do escape will have to navigate many barriers that birds outside
the cage do not.
The birdcage metaphor helps us understand why racism can be so hard to
see and recognize: we have a limited view. Without recognizing how our
position in relation to the bird defines how much of the cage we can see, we
rely on single situations, exceptions, and anecdotal evidence for our
understanding, rather than on broader, interlocking patterns. Although there
are always exceptions, the patterns are consistent and well documented:
People of color are confined and shaped by forces and barriers that are not
accidental, occasional, or avoidable. These forces are systematically related
to each other in ways that restrict their movement.
Individual whites may be “against” racism, but they still benefit from a
system that privileges whites as a group. David Wellman succinctly
summarizes racism as “a system of advantage based on race.”17 These
advantages are referred to as white privilege, a sociological concept
referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot
be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context (government,
community, workplace, schools, etc.).18 But let me be clear: stating that
racism privileges whites does not mean that individual white people do not
struggle or face barriers. It does mean that we do not face the particular
barriers of racism.
As with prejudice and discrimination, we can remove the qualifier
reverse from any discussion of racism. By definition, racism is a deeply
embedded historical system of institutional power. It is not fluid and does
not change direction simply because a few individuals of color manage to
excel.
WHITENESS AS A POSITION OF STATUS
Being perceived as white carries more than a mere racial classification; it is
a social and institutional status and identity imbued with legal, political,
economic, and social rights and privileges that are denied to others.
Reflecting on the social and economic advantages of being classified as
white, critical race scholar Cheryl Harris coined the phrase “whiteness as
property.” Tracing the evolving concept of whiteness across legal history,
she explains:
By according whiteness an actual legal status, an aspect of identity was
converted into an external object of property, moving whiteness from
privileged identity to a vested interest. The law’s construction of whiteness
defined and affirmed critical aspects of identity (who is white); of privilege
(what benefits accrue to that status); and, of property (what legal
entitlements arise from that status). Whiteness at various times signifies and
is deployed as identity, status, and property, sometimes singularly,
sometimes in tandem.19
Harris’s analysis is useful because it shows how identity and perceptions
of identity can grant or deny resources. These resources include self-worth,
visibility, positive expectations, psychological freedom from the tether of
race, freedom of movement, the sense of belonging, and a sense of
entitlement to all the above.
We might think of whiteness as all the aspects of being white—aspects
that go beyond mere physical differences and are related to the meaning and
resultant material advantage of being defined as white in society: what is
granted and how it is granted based on that meaning. Instead of the typical
focus on how racism hurts people of color, to examine whiteness is to focus
on how racism elevates white people.
Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as
the norm or standard for human, and people of color 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.
People of color, including W. E. B. Du Bois and James Baldwin, have
been writing about whiteness for decades, if not centuries. These writers
urged white people to turn their attention onto themselves to explore what it
means to be white in a society that is so divided by race. For example, in
1946, a French reporter asked expatriate writer Richard Wright his thoughts
on the “Negro problem” in the United States. Wright replied, “There isn’t
any Negro problem; there is only a white problem.”20
As Wright pointed out, racism against people of color doesn’t occur in a
vacuum. Yet the idea that racism in the United States can operate outside
white people is reinforced through celebrations such as Black History
Month, in which we study the Civil War and civil rights eras as if they
occurred separately from all US history. In addition to the general way these
color-based celebrations take whites out of the equation, there are specific
ways that the achievements of people of color are separated from the
overall social context and depoliticized, for instance, in stories we tell about
black cultural heroes.
The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness
obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions
invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to
break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was
certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially
special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that
Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete
before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead,
the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man
whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical
distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he
simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the
institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being
granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would
have removed him.
Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing
institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism
and meritocracy. They also do whites a disservice by obscuring the white
allies who, behind the scenes, worked hard and long to open the field to
African American players. These allies could serve as much-needed role
models for other whites (although we also need to acknowledge that in the
case of the desegregation of baseball, there was an economic incentive for
these allies).
I am not against Black History Month. But it should be celebrated in a
way that doesn’t reinforce whiteness. For those who ask why there is no
White History Month, the answer illustrates how whiteness works. White
history is implied in the absence of its acknowledgment; white history is the
norm for history. Thus, our need to qualify that we are speaking about black
history or women’s history suggests that these contributions lie outside the
norm.
Ruth Frankenberg, a premier white scholar in the field of whiteness
studies, describes whiteness as multidimensional. These dimensions include
a location of structural advantage, a standpoint from which white people
look at ourselves, at others, and at society, and a set of cultural practices
that are not named or acknowledged.21 To say that whiteness is a location of
structural advantage is to recognize that to be white is to be in a privileged
position within society and its institutions—to be seen as an insider and to
be granted the benefits of belonging. This position automatically bestows
unearned advantages. Whites control all major institutions of society and set
the policies and practices that others must live by. Although rare individual
people of color may be inside the circles of power—Colin Powell, Clarence
Thomas, Marco Rubio, Barack Obama—they support the status quo and do
not challenge racism in any way significant enough to be threatening. Their
positions of power do not mean these public figures don’t experience
racism (Obama endured insults and resistance previously unheard-of), but
the status quo remains intact.
To say that whiteness is a standpoint is to say that a significant aspect of
white identity is to see oneself as an individual, outside or innocent of race
—“just human.” This standpoint views white people and their interests as
central to, and representative of, humanity. Whites also produce and
reinforce the dominant narratives of society—such as individualism and
meritocracy—and use these narratives to explain the positions of other
racial groups. These narratives allow us to congratulate ourselves on our
success within the institutions of society and blame others for their lack of
success.
To say that that whiteness includes a set of cultural practices that are not
recognized by white people is to understand racism as a network of norms
and actions that consistently create advantage for whites and disadvantage
for people of color. These norms and actions include basic rights and
benefits of the doubt, purportedly granted to all but which are actually only
consistently afforded to white people. The dimensions of racism benefiting
white people are usually invisible to whites. 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.
WHITE SUPREMACY
When we look back to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s,
we might think of white supremacists as the people we saw in photos and
on television, beating blacks at lunch counters, bombing black churches,
and screaming at little Ruby Bridges, the first African American child to
integrate an all-white elementary school in Louisiana in 1960. Today we
might think of the self-described “alt-right” white nationalists marching
with torches in Virginia and shouting “blood and soil” as they protest the
removal of Confederate war memorials. Most white people do not identify
with these images of white supremacists and so take great umbrage to the
term being used more broadly. For sociologists and those involved in
current racial justice movements, however, white supremacy is a descriptive
and useful term to capture the all-encompassing centrality and assumed
superiority of people defined and perceived as white and the practices based
on this assumption. White supremacy in this context does not refer to
individual white people and their individual intentions or actions but to an
overarching political, economic, and social system of domination. Again,
racism is a structure, not an event. While hate groups that openly proclaim
white superiority do exist and this term refers to them also, the popular
consciousness solely associates white supremacy with these radical groups.
This reductive definition obscures the reality of the larger system at work
and prevents us from addressing this system.
While racism in other cultures exists based on different ideas of which
racial group is superior to another, the United States is a global power, and
through movies and mass media, corporate culture, advertising, US-owned
manufacturing, military presence, historical colonial relations, missionary
work, and other means, white supremacy is circulated globally. This
powerful ideology promotes the idea of whiteness as the ideal for humanity
well beyond the West. White supremacy is especially relevant in countries
that have a history of colonialism by Western nations.
In his book The Racial Contract, Charles W. Mills argues that the racial
contract is a tacit and sometimes explicit agreement among members of the
peoples of Europe to assert, promote, and maintain the ideal of white
supremacy in relation to all other people of the world. This agreement is an
intentional and integral characteristic of the social contract, underwriting all
other social contracts. White supremacy has shaped a system of global
European domination: it brings into existence whites and nonwhites, full
persons and subpersons. It influences white moral theory and moral
psychology and is imposed on nonwhites through ideological conditioning
and violence. Mills says that “what has usually been taken . . . as the racist
‘exception’ has really been the rule; what has been taken as the ‘rule’ . . .
[racial equality] . . . has really been the exception.”22
Mills describes white supremacy as “the unnamed political system that
has made the modern world what it is today.”23 He notes that although
white supremacy has shaped Western political thought for hundreds of
years, it is never named. In this way, white supremacy is rendered invisible
while other political systems—socialism, capitalism, fascism—are
identified and studied. In fact, much of white supremacy’s power is drawn
from its invisibility, the taken-for-granted aspects that underwrite all other
political and social contracts.
Mills makes two points that are critical to our understanding of white
fragility. First, white supremacy is never acknowledged. Second, we cannot
study any sociopolitical system without addressing how that system is
mediated by race. The failure to acknowledge white supremacy protects it
from examination and holds it in place.
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay “The Case for Reparations,” he makes a
similar point:
To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected
on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual
society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover
the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. The lie ignores the
fact that reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not
the same. . . . [W]hite supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded
demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental
to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.24
In light of the reality of historical and continual white supremacy, white
complaints about “reverse” racism by programs intended to ameliorate the
most basic levels of discrimination are profoundly petty and delusional. As
Mills summarizes:
Both globally and within particular nation states, then, white people,
Europeans and their descendants, continue to benefit from the Racial
Contract, which creates a world in their cultural image, political states
differentially favoring their interests, an economy structured around the
racial exploitation of others, and a moral psychology . . . skewed
consciously or unconsciously toward privileging them, taking the status quo
of differing racial entitlement as normatively legitimate, and not to be
investigated further.25
Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical
economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits
those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power
privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for
example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our
institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017:
• Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the
ten richest in the world)
• US Congress: 90 percent white
• US governors: 96 percent white
• Top military advisers: 100 percent white
• President and vice president: 100 percent white
• US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white
• Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white
• People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white
• People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white
• People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white
• People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white
• People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time,
worldwide: 95 percent white
• Teachers: 82 percent white
• Full-time college professors: 84 percent white
• Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26
These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these
institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most
powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people”
versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group
that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image,
worldview, and interests across the entire society.
One of the most potent ways white supremacy is disseminated is through
media representations, which have a profound impact on how we see the
world. Those who write and direct films are our cultural narrators; the
stories they tell shape our worldviews. Given that the majority of white
people live in racial isolation from people of color (and black people in
particular) and have very few authentic cross-racial relationships, white
people are deeply influenced by the racial messages in films. Consider one
statistic from the preceding list: of the hundred top-grossing films
worldwide in 2016, ninety-five were directed by white Americans (ninetynine of them by men). That is an incredibly homogenous group of directors.
Because these men are most likely at the top of the social hierarchy in terms
of race, class, and gender, they are the least likely to have a wide variety of
authentic egalitarian cross-racial relationships. Yet they are in the position
to represent the racial “other.” Their representations of the “other” are
thereby extremely narrow and problematic, and yet they are reinforced over
and over. Further, these biased representations have been disseminated
worldwide; while white supremacy originated in the West, it circulates
globally.
White resistance to the term white supremacy prevents us from
examining how these messages shape us. Explicit white supremacists
understand this. Christian Picciolini, a former white nationalist, explains
that white nationalists recognized that they had to distance themselves from
the terms racist and white supremacy to gain broader appeal. He describes
the “alt-right” and white nationalist movements as the culmination of a
thirty-year effort to massage the white supremacist message: “We
recognized back then that we were turning away the average American
white racists and that we needed to look and speak more like our neighbors.
The idea we had was to blend in, normalize, make the message more
palatable.”27 Derek Black, godson of David Duke and former key youth
leader in the white nationalist movement, explains: “My whole talk was the
fact that you could run as Republicans, and say things like we need to shut
down immigration, we need to fight affirmative action, we need to end
globalism, and you could win these positions, maybe as long as you didn’t
get outed as a white nationalist and get all the controversy that comes along
with it.”28
Today’s white nationalists are not the first to recognize the importance of
distancing oneself from more-explicit expressions of white supremacy. In a
1981 interview, Lee Atwater, Republican political strategist and adviser to
presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, explained what came to
be known as “the Southern strategy”—how to appeal to the racism of white
Southern voters without pronouncing it openly:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you
can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced
busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that]
you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about
are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt
worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. . . . But I’m
saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing
away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—
because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much
more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract
than “Nigger, nigger.”29
Our umbrage at the term white supremacy only serves to protect the
processes it describes and obscure the mechanisms of racial inequality. Still,
I understand that the term is very charged for many white people, especially
older white people who associate the term with extreme hate groups.
However, I hope to have made clear that white supremacy is something
much more pervasive and subtle than the actions of explicit white
nationalists. White supremacy describes the culture we live in, a culture that
positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as
ideal. White supremacy is more than the idea that whites are superior to
people of color; it is the deeper premise that supports this idea—the
definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color
as a deviation from that norm.
Naming white supremacy changes the conversation in two key ways: It
makes the system visible and shifts the locus of change onto white people,
where it belongs. It also points us in the direction of the lifelong work that
is uniquely ours, challenging our complicity with and investment in racism.
This does not mean that people of color do not play a part but that the full
weight of responsibility rests with those who control the institutions.
THE WHITE RACIAL FRAME
Sociologist Joe Feagin coined the term “white racial frame” to describe how
whites circulate and reinforce racial messages that position whites as
superior.30 In this way, the white racial frame rests on, and is a key
mechanism of, white supremacy. The frame is deep and extensive, with
thousands of stored “bits.” These bits are pieces of cultural information—
images, stories, interpretations, omissions, silences—that are passed along
from one person and group to the next, and from one generation to the next.
The bits circulate both explicitly and implicitly, for example, through
movies, television, news, and other media and stories told to us by family
and friends. By constantly using the white racial frame to interpret social
relations and integrating new bits, whites reinscribe the frame ever deeper.
At the most general level, the racial frame views whites as superior in
culture and achievement and views people of color as generally of less
social, economic, and political consequence; people of color are seen as
inferior to whites in the making and keeping of the nation. At the next level
of framing, because social institutions (education, medicine, law,
government, finance, and the military) are controlled by whites, white
dominance is unremarkable and taken for granted. That whites are
disproportionately enriched and privileged via these institutions is also
taken for granted; we are entitled to more privileges and resources because
we are “better” people. At the deepest level of the white frame, negative
stereotypes and images of racial others as inferior are reinforced and
accepted. At this level, corresponding emotions such as fear, contempt, and
resentment are also stored.
The frame includes both negative understandings of people of color and
positive understandings of whites and white institutions. It is so
internalized, so submerged, that it is never consciously considered or
challenged by most whites. To get a sense of the white racial frame below
the surface of your conscious awareness, think back to the earliest time that
you were aware that people from racial groups other than your own existed.
People of color recall a sense of always having been aware, while most
white people recall being aware by at least age five. If you lived in a
primarily white environment and are having trouble remembering, think
about Disney movies, music videos, sports heroes, Chinese food, Aunt
Jemima syrup, Uncle Ben’s rice, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Columbus Day,
Apu from The Simpsons, and the donkey from Shrek.
Reflect on these representations and ask yourself, Did your parents tell
you that race didn’t matter and that everyone was equal? Did they have
many friends of color? If people of color did not live in your neighborhood,
why didn’t they? Where did they live? What images, sounds, and smells did
you associate with these other neighborhoods? What kind of activities did
you think went on there? Were you encouraged to visit these
neighborhoods, or were you discouraged from visiting these
neighborhoods?
What about schools? What made a school good? Who went to good
schools? Who went to bad schools? If the schools in your area were racially
segregated (as most schools in the United States are), why didn’t you attend
school together? If this is because you lived in different neighborhoods,
why did you live in different neighborhoods? Were “their” schools
considered equal to, better than, or worse than, yours? If there was busing
in your town, in which direction did it go; who was bused into whose
schools? Why did the busing go in one direction and not the other?
If you went to school together, did you all sit together in the cafeteria? If
not, why not? Were the honors or advanced placement classes and the
lower-track classes equally racially integrated? If not, why not?
Now think about your teachers. When was the first time you had a
teacher of the same race as yours? Did you often have teachers of the same
race as your own?
Most white people, in reflecting on these questions, realize that they
almost always had white teachers; many did not have a teacher of color
until college. Conversely, most people of color have rarely if ever had a
teacher who reflected their own race(s). Why is it important to reflect on
our teachers in our effort to uncover our racial socialization and the
messages we receive from schools?
As you answer these questions, also consider which races were
geographically closer to you than others. If your school was perceived as
racially diverse, which races were more represented, and how did the racial
distribution affect the sense of value associated with the school? For
example, if white and Asian-heritage students were the primary racial
groups in your school, your school was likely to be seen as better than a
school with more representation from black and Latinx students. What were
you learning about the racial hierarchy and your place in it from
geography?
If you lived and went to school in racial segregation as most people in the
United States do, you had to make sense of the incongruity between the
claim that everyone was equal and the lived reality of segregation. If you
lived in an integrated neighborhood and/or attended an integrated school,
you had to make sense of the segregation in most of society outside the
school, especially in segments considered of higher value or quality. It is
also highly likely that there was still racial separation within the school.
And for those of us who may have grown up in more integrated
environments due to social class or changing neighborhood demographics,
it is unlikely that integration has been sustained in our current lives.
Reflection on these questions provides an entry point into the deeper
messages that we all absorb and that shape our behavior and responses
below the conscious level.
In the US, race is encoded in geography. I can name every neighborhood
in my city and its racial makeup. I can also tell you if a neighborhood is
coming up or down in terms of home equity, and this will be based
primarily on how its racial demographics are changing. Going up? It will be
getting whiter. Going down? It will be getting less white. When I was a
child, posters on my school walls and television shows like Sesame Street
told me explicitly that all people were equal, but we simply do not live
together across race. I had to make sense of this separation. If we were
equal, why did we live separately? It must be normal and natural to live
apart (certainly no adult in my life was complaining about the separation).
And at a deeper level, it must be righteous that we live apart, since we are
better people. How did I get the message that we were better people?
Consider how we talk about white neighborhoods: good, safe, sheltered,
clean, desirable. By definition, other spaces (not white) are bad, dangerous,
crime-ridden and to be avoided; these neighborhoods are not positioned as
sheltered and innocent. In these ways, the white racial frame is under
construction.
Predominately white neighborhoods are not outside of race—they are
teeming with race. Every moment we spend in those environments
reinforces powerful aspects of the white racial frame, including a limited
worldview, a reliance on deeply problematic depictions of people of color,
comfort in segregation with no sense that there might be value in knowing
people of color, and internalized superiority. In turn, our capacity to engage
constructively across racial lines becomes profoundly limited.
To illustrate an early lesson in white racial framing, imagine that a white
mother and her white child are in the grocery store. The child sees a black
man and shouts out, “Mommy, that man’s skin is black!” Several people,
including the black man, turn to look. How do you imagine the mother
would respond? Most people would immediately put their finger to their
mouth and say, “Shush!” When white people are asked what the mother
might be feeling, most agree that she is likely to feel anxiety, tension, and
embarrassment. Indeed, many of us have had similar experiences wherein
the message was clear: we should not talk openly about race.
When I use this example with my students, sometimes a student will say
that the mother is just teaching her child to be polite. In other words,
naming this man’s race would be impolite. But why? What is shameful
about being black—so shameful that we should pretend that we don’t
notice?31 The mother’s reaction would probably be the same if the man had
a visible disability of some kind or was obese. But if the child had seen a
white person and shouted out, “Mommy, that man’s skin is white!” it is
unlikely that the mother would feel the same anxiety, tension, and
embarrassment that would have accompanied the first statement.
Now imagine that the child had shouted out how handsome the man was,
or how strong. These statements would probably be met with chuckles and
smiles. The child would not likely be shushed, because we consider these
statements compliments.
The example of a child publicly calling out a black man’s race and
embarrassing the mother illustrates several aspects of white children’s racial
socialization. First, children learn that it is taboo to openly talk about race.
Second, they learn that people should pretend not to notice undesirable
aspects that define some people as less valuable than others (a large
birthmark on someone’s face, a person using a wheelchair). These lessons
manifest themselves later in life, when white adults drop their voices before
naming the race of someone who isn’t white (and especially so if the race
being named is black), as if blackness were shameful or the word itself
were impolite. If we add all the comments we make about people of color
privately, when we are less careful, we may begin to recognize how white
children are taught to navigate race.
CHAPTER 3
RACISM AFTER THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
“Children today are so open. When the old folks die off, we will finally be
free of racism.”
“I grew up in a small rural community, so I was very sheltered. I didn’t
learn anything about racism.”
“I judge people by what they do, not who they are.”
“I don’t see color; I see people.”
“We are all red under the skin.”
“I marched in the sixties.”
New racism is a term coined by film professor Martin Barker to capture the
ways in which racism has adapted over time so that modern norms, policies,
and practices result in similar racial outcomes as those in the past, while not
appearing to be explicitly racist.1 Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
captures this dynamic in the title of his book Racism Without Racists:
Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America.2
He says that though virtually no one claims to be racist anymore, racism
still exists. How is that possible? Racism can still exist because it is highly
adaptive. Because of this adaptability, we must be able to identify how it
changes over time. For example, after a white nationalist march and the
murder of a counter-protester, the president of the United States said that
there are “very fine people on both sides.” This comment would have been
unthinkable from a high-ranking public official just a few years ago. Yet if
we asked the president if he was a racist, I am confident that he would reply
with a resounding no (in fact, he re...
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