In White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, author and anti-racist educator Robin DiAngelo explores white fragility—the phenomenon by which white people become angry, defensive, or hostile when confronted with the idea that they are complicit in systemic racism. As a white woman herself, DiAngelo documents the ways in which white Americans are unable to emotionally withstand even minor amounts of racially triggered stress and retreat into a defensive posture when forced to discuss racism.
White Fragility is written for white people who consider themselves to be liberal or progressive on racial matters. Like all white people, white progressives are raised in a society that is institutionally racist. By this, we mean a society in which all key political, economic, social, and cultural institutions are overwhelmingly controlled by white people. This disproportionate share of power is the product of centuries of history during which people of color (especially black people) were systematically enslaved, expropriated, disenfranchised, segregated, and marginalized. As a result, white control of society became the “normal” or “standard” state of affairs.
Being raised in such a society with such a history leaves an indelible mark on white people, even those white progressives who believe they stand in opposition to it. Everyone is socialized by the conditions that surround them—and in the American context, those conditions have always placed white people in a superior position and black and brown people in an inferior position. Simply being white in such a society confers an incalculable advantage.
White progressives, however, believe themselves to stand in opposition to racism. Because of their own belief in their moral superiority relative to other white people, however, progressives often become extremely defensive or outraged at the mere suggestion that they, too, benefit from (and, therefore, contribute to) institutional racism. The gap between their professed beliefs and their participation (however unwitting) in a system of oppression becomes an unbearable psychological burden—triggering white fragility.
This stems from how white people in general tend to define racism as a personal character trait. For them, it is something mean and cruel done by mean and cruel people, usually involving explicit and open hostility toward people of color. But this definition of racism is wrong. Racism is not an individual character trait. The discussion of whether or not an individual white person is or is not “racist” entirely misses the point about how racism actually works.
Racism is inherently about power within society—wielded collectively by those who have it against those who don’t. It is deeply embedded in the social, political, cultural, economic, and legal power structures of the United States. White people, as the group that has always wielded power in America, derive enormous material and psychological advantages from this racist organization of society—whether they believe they do or not.
The belief in individualism is a central part of American ideology. It is the belief that individuals have full agency to shape the outcomes in their lives. According to individualism, no one faces any barriers on the way to achievement that are not of their own making.
Individualism is a comforting and validating belief—for white people, who sit atop the nation’s economic and political power structures. It tells them that their success and advantages in life are entirely the result of their own hard work, intelligence, and initiative.
But individualism sends a very different message to people of color. If powerful and successful people are powerful and successful because of their own merits as individuals, then it can only follow that powerless and unsuccessful people are in that condition because they are somehow “lesser” individuals. By its very nature, a belief in individualism renders one incapable of acknowledging the structural power disparities within society that lead to inequitable outcomes for different groups.
White beliefs in objectivity are closely related to the myth of individualism. Because white people believe that they are unique individuals unshaped by history or society, they also come to believe that their views of the world are entirely objective. If you don’t believe you’re conditioned by society or any other external forces, you can’t accept the reality of your own biases.
Being asked to confront one’s actions and beliefs as racist can be deeply upsetting to white people, because it punctures their myth of objectivity. It suggests that one does not have complete autonomy over how one thinks and acts—but, rather, that one ventures out into the world profoundly shaped by forces beyond one’s control.
Modern notions of race really started during the age of European colonization of the Americas, which began in the 16th century. Europeans kidnapped black Africans and transported them across the Atlantic Ocean to perform slave labor in the New World. Ideas of race arose from these historical traditions. Notions of racial superiority (for white people) and inferiority (for non-white peoples, chiefly those of African descent) emerged to justify the brutal system of exploitation. If black people were morally and intellectually inferior, then it was not immoral to enslave and kill them.
It is important to remember that this social construction of race preceded racism—indeed, it was essential to it. Our notions of race are inextricably linked to centuries’ worth of ideas and practices about who should and should not wield power in society.
White people are socially conditioned from birth to accept and support white supremacy. Although overt expressions of racism on the part of white people have been taboo since the Civil Rights Era, white society has failed to recognize the pervasiveness of institutional racism in American life. One common manifestation of this is the widespread claim by white people that they are “colorblind” or “don’t see race.”
Colorblindness enables white Americans to delude themselves into believing that they can avoid problems of race by simply pretending that they didn’t exist. But race profoundly shapes the experiences, views, and expectations of everyone in society. It is simply impossible for a white person raised in a society organized on the basis of institutional racism to not “see” race.
And even if it were possible, colorblindness would not be a desirable goal, because the experiences of people of color are inevitably defined by race. To deny the existence of race or to minimize its importance is to deny the existence of racism itself—and thus give implicit assent to it. A white person who professes to not see race unsurprisingly becomes defensive and agitated when the realities of institutional racism—and their responsibility for it as a beneficiary of it—are explained to them.
Because they are conditioned by a structurally racist society, white people act in myriad ways to bolster institutional racism. One example is the way that white people speak to each other about racial topics—often without ever explicitly mentioning race at all. This phenomenon is known as “race talk.”
White people will engage in race talk on the topic of black crime by expressing concern about the “character” of a neighborhood, the test scores at a local school, or declining property values. Race does not have to be mentioned at all. It is assumed by all white participants in such a conversation that these negative attributes like crime are definitionally tied to blackness. This is despite the fact that studies of census data and crime statistics do not support this belief, certainly when controlling for other factors like poverty (although it does not stop police from detaining and imprisoning men of color at far higher levels than their white counterparts). Such conversations serve to reinforce solidarity between white people and solidify white attitudes about the rightful ordering of the racial hierarchy.
These attitudes, in turn, guide white actions. Thus, in a phenomenon known as “white flight,” white Americans will leave neighborhoods that are becoming more diverse (one study showed that even a tiny 7 percent African-American population in a neighborhood can trigger white flight), citing the desire to send their children to “good” schools. Although it’s not spoken, the assumption is that a “good” school is one attended by few minorities.
In 2007, sociologists Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin studied the ways in which white people expressed ideas and attitudes about race to one another. They found that innate beliefs in white supremacy were strong, even among supposedly liberal and progressive white millennials. They found that white millennials in college settings frequently told racist jokes, all while persisting in the belief that they were more open-minded and tolerant when it came to race.
Picca and Feagin argued that the telling of such jokes amounted to a performative ritual of white solidarity that strongly reinforced white supremacist beliefs and actions.
White misconceptions about racism inform how white people view people of color (specifically African-Americans) and how they are able to deny their own culpability in reinforcing racial inequity—a culpability that is rarely questioned because of instinctive white fragility.
As discussed, white people are able to deny the presence of racism because they treat it as specific behaviors committed by specific people, rather than the structural phenomenon that it actually is. In this incorrect conception of racism, racism functions like an act of criminality. The possibility of it always exists, but it has to be consciously and knowingly “committed” by someone.
But, again, this is a misunderstanding of racism. Racism is not simply the utterance of racial slurs or acts of racially motivated violence—behaviors, in other words, that are performed by individuals. At its most powerful and insidious, racism acts at a collective, societal level.
Because white people have always been dominant in society, they have not had to confront the consequences or even the existence of their enormous privileges. This is largely because racism encodes whiteness as the normal or standard condition for society. This pervades even basic language.
The “Americanness” of people of color, for example, is always qualified as “African-American,” “Asian-American,” or “Latin American.” Rarely are white people called “White-American” or “Caucasian-American.” Whiteness is assumed to be standard, normal, and synonymous with American identity itself.
Most importantly, our systems and assumptions determine who controls institutions and, therefore, wields power—this is what is meant by institutional racism. This, in turn, leads to inequitable outcomes for people of color relative to white people.
Indeed, even a cursory look at America’s most powerful institutions shows just how embedded institutional racism is.
Although this is just a snapshot, it demonstrates how institutional racism pervades and dominates American economic, political, and cultural life. Seeing the overwhelming whiteness of America’s elite (not to mention the dominance of white figures like Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR discussed in history books) sends a powerful signal to children, even at an early age.
Many white people claim that by virtue of having black friends, they are free from any charges of responsibility for institutional racism. But having individual friendships with people of color does not invalidate or cancel out the powerful social conditioning that comes with being raised in a white supremacist society. This is especially true if white people refuse to discuss race with their friends of color—thereby denying their friends’ lived experiences.
Such claims are merely excuses, refusals to engage in reflection about one’s own participation in a white supremacist society. Racism is a continuum or a spectrum. A white person will never be entirely free of racist attitudes, but with honesty and a willingness to question one’s own racially problematic behavior, one can move toward the more just end of the continuum.
Because of white fragility, white people react harshly to even the most minor challenges to their status in the racial hierarchy. In anti-racist or anti-bias training seminars, DiAngelo recounts instances in which white participants were made aware of racially problematic statements or behaviors they’d engaged in during the course of the seminar. Inevitably, no matter how gently and constructively these criticisms were offered, they would be met with some form of hostility or denial.
These responses invalidate the experiences of people of color and shut down the possibility of real engagement with the reality that all white people benefit from and continue to uphold white supremacy. They make the common mistake of conflating intention with impact. One’s intentions with regard to people of color are completely irrelevant when they result in racist outcomes.
Some white people even cling to the idea that it is actually white people who face systemic racism rather than people of color (distressingly, a recent social survey found that 55 percent of whites believed this).
But we should not make the mistake of characterizing white fragility as merely a defensive mechanism. Rather, white fragility is a powerful means of reinforcing white supremacy and shutting down any challenges to it by people of color.
By casting the white person in the discussion as the victim, white fragility enables white people to command social resources of time and attention. For example, a white woman brought to tears after being forced to confront her complicity in systemic racism might compel other people (even people of color) to comfort and reassure her that she isn’t racist. The white woman and her shame and anxieties become the center of attention.
Or, a white man who reacts angrily and defensively in the same situation will similarly refocus the attention on his angry and bombastic reaction. These tactics draw attention away from the discussion of systemic racism, shut down potential challenges to it, and make white concerns and white anxieties the focus.
The work of recognizing and shedding (as much as possible) one’s racist conditioning as a white person can be extremely difficult. But it is important to do if you’re serious about your professed opposition to racism. You cannot tackle systemic racism if you cannot identify and come to terms with the ways in which you unfairly benefit from and perpetuate it.
Instead of retreating into fragility, look at the feedback, especially when it comes from a person of color, as an opportunity to learn and grow. Your response shouldn’t be, “How dare you!” It should instead be, “Thank you.”
Racial healing can only begin when white people shed their reflexive defensiveness and build greater capacity to be uncomfortable with examinations of their own privilege and their contributions to racist power structures. White people must discard the myth that their white racial identity doesn’t exist and accept the truth that it powerfully shapes how they view the world and their role in it.
The discomfort is not incidental—it is key to growth and to uncovering one’s inevitable racial blind spots. The process of disrupting racism, after all, involves acknowledging one’s unfair benefits and advantages as a white person and then working to cede those privileges. It’s not easy—racism is a system from which all white people benefit. If anti-racism entailed zero sacrifice on the part of whites, racism would be far easier to overcome.
White people have a moral responsibility to educate themselves and take the initiative to disrupt and combat racism wherever they see it. It is critical that this be a self-directed journey. You as a white person must do the hard work yourself. It is not the responsibility of people of color to guide you through your anti-racist education or to accommodate your white fragility when you are confronted with your own culpability for racism.
This work will often be challenging and difficult, forcing you to grapple with aspects of your own privilege and complicity. But it is necessary work if we as a society are serious about rolling back the legacy of racism.
In White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, author and anti-racist educator Robin DiAngelo explores white fragility—the phenomenon by which white people become angry, defensive, or hostile when confronted with the idea that they are complicit in systemic racism. As a white woman herself, DiAngelo documents the ways in which white Americans are unable to emotionally withstand even minor amounts of racially triggered stress and retreat into a defensive posture when forced to discuss racism.
White Fragility is written for white people who consider themselves to be liberal or progressive on racial matters. Like all white people, white progressives are raised in a society that is institutionally racist. By this, we mean a society in which all key political, economic, social, and cultural institutions are overwhelmingly controlled by white people. This disproportionate share of power is the product of centuries of history during which people of color (especially black people) were systematically enslaved, expropriated, disenfranchised, segregated, and marginalized. As a result, white control of society became the “normal” or “standard” state of affairs.
Being raised in such a society with such a history leaves an indelible mark on white people, even those white progressives who believe they stand in opposition to it. Everyone is socialized by the conditions that surround them—and in the American context, those conditions have always placed white people in a superior position and black and brown people in an inferior position. Simply being white in such a society confers an incalculable advantage.
White progressives, however, believe themselves to stand in opposition to racism. Because of their own belief in their moral superiority relative to other white people, however, progressives often become extremely defensive or outraged at the mere suggestion that they, too, benefit from (and, therefore, contribute to) institutional racism. The gap between their professed beliefs and their participation (however unwitting) in a system of oppression becomes an unbearable psychological burden—triggering white fragility.
These reactions stem from a deep misunderstanding of what racism is. White people tend to define racism as a personal character trait. For them, it is something mean and cruel done by mean and cruel people, usually involving explicit and open hostility toward people of color. This picture of racism often involves the invocation of the most outlandish manifestations of white supremacy throughout American history, such as lynchings, slavery, and violence against civil rights protestors. By the logic of this misguided understanding of racism, one cannot be racist if one does not engage in these activities or hold overtly hostile attitudes towards people of color.
But this definition of racism is wrong. Racism is not an individual character trait. The discussion of whether or not an individual white person is or is not “racist” entirely misses the point about how racism actually works.
Racism is inherently about power within society—wielded collectively by those who have it against those who don’t. It is deeply embedded in the social, political, cultural, economic, and legal power structures of the United States. White people, as the group that has always wielded power in America, derive enormous material and psychological advantages from this racist organization of society—whether they believe they do or not.
Because white people misunderstand racism and its beneficial impact on their lives, they are unable or unwilling to grapple with their own role in sustaining it when it’s pointed out to them. Thinking about racism as a question of individual morality naturally triggers defensiveness and denial in white people. The logic goes something like, “Racism is something bad done by bad people. I’m not a bad person. Therefore, I can’t be racist.” White fragility is a natural by-product of the universal human desire to think of oneself as good and morally upstanding.
White fragility also stems from white people’s denial of their own racial identity. Many white people inherently view “race” as a characteristic held solely by non-white people. They are unable to accept the idea that whiteness itself is a powerful form of identity, one that profoundly shapes one’s attitudes, assumptions, and actions. Pointing this out to white people results in denial, because they perceive it as an attack on their objectivity and individuality.
They see their thoughts and behavior as stemming from their “neutral” observations about the world, rather than from biases built into the society in which they were raised. For many white people, therefore, “identity politics” (the label they tend to use to deride and dismiss demands by people of color for racial equity) is something that is by definition practiced solely by non-white people—because, to them, “whiteness” is not an identity at all.
All of this speaks to the power and pervasiveness of the idea of whiteness. Whiteness has been the dominant force within American life for centuries, yet its very existence is denied by the people who most benefit from it.
In this summary, we’ll tackle the phenomenon of white fragility by examining:
(Shortform note: Some of the original chapters in White Fragility are only a few pages long. While we usually strive to be faithful to the original book’s structure, we felt that adhering to it in this case would result in too-frequent chapter breaks that would compromise readability and make it more difficult to absorb the ideas of the text. Accordingly, we have consolidated our summary into four thematic sections.)
To explore the phenomenon of white fragility and how it stands in the way of efforts to dismantle racist power structures, we first need to understand whiteness itself and the implicit assumptions and beliefs that support it.
In this chapter, we’ll explore:
The belief in individualism is a central part of American ideology. It is the belief that individuals have full agency to shape the outcomes in their lives. According to individualism, no one faces any barriers on the way to achievement that are not of their own making. Factors such as where you were born, who your parents were, or the color of your skin are simply irrelevant.
Individualism is a comforting and validating belief—for white people, who sit atop the nation’s economic and political power structures. It tells them that their success and advantages in life are entirely the result of their own hard work, intelligence, and initiative. Individualism, therefore, supports the belief that society is fair and organized as a meritocracy.
But individualism sends a very different message to people of color. If powerful and successful people are powerful and successful because of their own merits as individuals, then it can only follow that powerless and unsuccessful people are in that condition because they are somehow “lesser” individuals.
But this belief in pure meritocracy is a myth. White people are overrepresented in positions of power largely due to their status as beneficiaries of institutional racism. This system provides them with wealth, educational opportunities, access, and social capital that people of color simply do not have. Even seemingly race-neutral job qualifications like an advanced degree are a marker of white privilege because of the inherent resources required to even obtain such a degree—resources that black people are far less likely to have.
By its very nature, a belief in individualism renders one incapable of acknowledging the structural power disparities within society that lead to inequitable outcomes for different groups. In this way, individualism supports and bolsters the existing racial hierarchy.
Individualism, by downplaying the realities of group identity and group experience, also enables white people to deny their group identity as white people—including the advantages they derive from that identity and the ways in which it defines their attitudes and actions. This is what enables white people to treat racism as a series of isolated and discrete acts that can only be committed by an individual, instead of perpetuated by a society.
People of color, of course, are never afforded the comforting luxury of individualism. Their identity is always seen (be it by educators, lawmakers, employers, or the criminal justice system) as being shaped by their membership in a group.
White beliefs in objectivity are closely related to the myth of individualism. Because white people believe that they are unique individuals unshaped by history or society, they also come to believe that their views of the world are entirely objective.
This follows naturally from individualism. If you don’t believe you’re conditioned by society or any other external forces, you can’t accept the reality of your own biases.
But the belief in objectivity is also a myth. White people, like all people, are molded by the beliefs and ideologies of the society in which they live. And white people in the United States live in a society that explicitly places people who look like them at the seats of power.
Being asked to confront one’s actions and beliefs as racist can be deeply upsetting to white people, because it punctures their myth of objectivity. It suggests that one does not have complete autonomy over how one thinks and acts—but, rather, that one ventures out into the world profoundly shaped by forces beyond one’s control.
White beliefs about individualism and objectivity are central to white racial identity itself. They enable white people to see “race” as an attribute that only non-white “others” possess. White people unconsciously perceive whiteness as “normal” or “standard,” or simply lacking in race at all. In this conception of race, being white is synonymous with being American.
When we talk about race, however, we must be careful to define it as a social construct, not a biological reality. While there are certain physical differences between groups of people such as skin color, hair texture, or eye shape, these are superficial differences that owe their existence to where one’s ancestors lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. But these minor physical differences in and of themselves have no bearing on traits that matter to individual success, such as intelligence.
Modern notions of race really started during the age of European colonization of the Americas, which began in the 16th century. Europeans (mainly through a combination of deliberate extermination and disease) killed millions of indigenous peoples in North and South America, dismantled their existing political and economic systems, and founded colonies whose main purpose was to extract raw materials for export on the world market.
After the indigenous populations died out, Europeans began to kidnap black Africans and transport them across the Atlantic Ocean to perform slave labor in the New World. Ideas of race arose from these historical traditions. Notions of racial superiority (for white people) and inferiority (for non-white peoples, chiefly those of African descent) emerged to justify the brutal system of exploitation. If black people were morally and intellectually inferior, then it was not immoral to enslave and kill them.
After the founding of the United States, these ideas became further encoded into the nation’s legal system, with an entire set of laws emerging to protect the institution of slavery. Even after the abolition of slavery, whiteness became an essential qualification for full participation in American life.
When new immigrants came to America in the 19th and 20th centuries, the judicial system rendered judgments on which groups could and couldn’t be classified as white. By conferring specific advantages and benefits upon whiteness, American society transformed race into more than an identity—it became an interest, one that white people would jealously guard and protect.
Eventually, immigrant groups that once faced discrimination—like Irish- or Italian-Americans—were able to assimilate into white society by becoming more generically “American” and shedding their unique cultural or national identities. Implicit in this ability to assimilate, of course, was the idea that whiteness was the key component of American identity. Other forms of identity such as language or religion could be integrated. But this path was never open to black people, regardless of how long their ancestors may have been in the country, because, unlike the Irish and Italians, they couldn’t “pass” as white. Race was an immutable characteristic.
It is important to remember that the social construction of race preceded racism—indeed, it was essential to it. Our notions of race are inextricably linked to centuries worth of ideas and practices about who should and should not wield power in society.
Understanding this link between race and power is crucial to understanding the true nature of racism. To illustrate this, it’s useful to explore the differences between prejudice and racism. Prejudice is when you have an opinion about a large group of people based on some shared characteristic and then use that generalization to evaluate individual members of that group. And because none of us are objective and are all products of the larger forces that shape our society, we all have prejudicial beliefs and ideas of one kind or another.
For example, you might harbor the (incorrect) belief that people of East Asian descent have a natural aptitude for mathematics. You then assume that individuals of East Asian descent whom you meet must be math whizzes, based solely on their membership in that group.
Discrimination is when you act on prejudiced beliefs. It can range from exclusion to verbal abuse to outright violence. If you believe that black men are somehow hardwired to commit violent crime, you might refuse to hire them or instinctively cross the street when you encounter them.
But racism is a very different phenomenon, despite superficial similarities to simple prejudice.
Racism is defined by power and control of key institutions within a society. Thus (in the context of American history), slavery, Jim Crow, and discriminatory housing policies are just some of the functions of racism. They were products of white control over the political, legal, and economic apparatus of the country.
People of color can be prejudiced toward white people and can even discriminate against individual white people; but because, as a group, they have historically been (and remain) locked out of dominant positions within the nation’s power structure, by definition they cannot be racist. In other words, a group needs power within a society to even be capable of racism. Thus, “reverse racism,” the alleged oppression of whites at the hands of black people, is a contradiction of terms. Racism cannot be “reverse"—it can only go in one direction.
A black real estate agent might act on her prejudice and discriminate against an individual white person by refusing to help them buy a home; but black people have no ability to pass laws mandating which neighborhoods white people as a group are and aren’t allowed to live in.
Because white people have always been dominant in society, they have not had to confront the consequences or even the existence of their enormous privileges. This is largely because white supremacy encodes whiteness as the normal or standard condition for society. This pervades everything from language to how we view our nation’s history.
The “Americanness” of people of color, for example, is always qualified as “African-American,” “Asian-American,” or “Latin American.” Rarely are white people called “White-American” or “Caucasian-American.” Whiteness is assumed to be standard, normal, and synonymous with American identity itself.
Similarly, February is designated as Black History Month. Implicit in this labeling is the idea that “black” history stands somehow apart from American history in general. There does not need to be a corresponding White History Month, because the culture automatically assumes that such a designation would be redundant—in a white-dominated society, white history is simply the same as “history.”
This placement of white people atop the nation’s hierarchy and the enshrinement of whiteness as the embodiment of national identity is what scholars of race mean by white supremacy. Many white people recoil at the term and refuse to consider the idea that they bear responsibility for it because they associate it with extremist groups like the KKK or neo-Nazis.
But even a cursory look at America’s most powerful institutions shows just how embedded white supremacy is.
Although this is just a snapshot, it demonstrates how whiteness pervades and dominates American economic, political, and cultural life. Seeing the overwhelming whiteness of America’s elite (not to mention the dominance of white figures like Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR discussed in history books) sends a powerful signal to children, even at an early age.
White children grow up with a profound sense of belonging, regardless of where they go or what other personal attributes they might have. There is no physical or social space in which they are ever made to feel that their presence would be unnatural or unwelcome. Children of color (especially African-Americans), by contrast, grow up feeling constantly apart from or “othered” by society, no matter how far up the social or economic scale they might personally ascend as individuals.
Explore the fairness of outcomes in society.
Do you believe that America is a meritocracy? Why or why not?
What accomplishments do you believe you've 'earned?' Choose one accomplishment to examine more closely.
What aspects other than your own intelligence, motivation, and hard work might have contributed to this success?
In the last chapter, we described how white supremacy is the dominant ideology of the United States, shaping every institution and every facet of American society. We also saw how white mythologies about individualism and objectivity blind white people to their own racial identity and the ways in which they benefit both materially and psychologically from white supremacy.
In this chapter, we’ll explore in greater detail how white people are socially conditioned from birth to accept and support white supremacy. As we’ll see, white people, even those who profess to be free of bias, sustain and uphold white supremacy through:
The successes of the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s were a watershed moment. Television images of black protestors, including women and children, being brutalized by southern sheriffs or beaten during sit-ins at segregated lunch counters offended and horrified many white Americans, particularly in the northern United States.
For them, these scenes of outright barbarism perpetrated against African-Americans became the epitome of “racism.” Moreover, landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented the first serious federal efforts to dismantle the system of legal segregation and disenfranchisement that defined American life since the end of the Civil War.
In the wake of these developments, overt expressions of racism on the part of white people became a social taboo. Whites did not wish to be associated with the violent scenes of anti-black racism they saw on the evening news; moreover, civil rights legislation made explicitly racist actions in political and economic life illegal. The vast majority of white Americans came to accept that blatant support for white supremacy (which had been open and commonplace among whites) was no longer socially acceptable.
But that did not mean that they engaged in the difficult work of examining how institutional racism still pervaded American life. Whites wanted to be seen as good people (because they now associated racism with acts of immorality and illegality) but did not wish to question their privileged status.
They thus seized on the idea of colorblindness, often by misappropriating Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Colorblindness enabled white Americans to delude themselves into believing that they could avoid problems of race by simply pretending that they didn’t exist. White people often claim colorblindness through statements like:
But this is, of course, false. Race may not have a genuine biological basis, but as we saw in the previous chapter, it is very much a social reality, one that profoundly shapes people’s experiences, views, and expectations. It is simply impossible for a white person raised in a society organized on the basis of institutional racism to not “see” race.
And even if it were possible, colorblindness would not be a desirable goal, because the experiences of people of color are inevitably defined by race. To deny the existence of race or to minimize its importance is to deny the existence of racism itself—and thus give implicit assent to it. By refusing to acknowledge a person of color’s racial identity and claiming that “you don’t see color,” you as a white person are denying the often-painful reality of their lived experiences, absurdly and offensively equating them with your own, and ignoring the existence of racism as a historical and structural phenomenon, as well as a daily one for people of color.
A person of color, for example, may have been made to feel unwelcome in the workplace or felt uncomfortable walking through a certain part of their city because of their race—for them, race is an inescapable, defining feature of life. Claiming to not see race is contributing to this person’s marginalization, while blinding yourself to your own racist socialization.
This professed belief in colorblindness is also a great trigger of white fragility. A white person who professes to not see race unsurprisingly becomes defensive and agitated when the realities of institutional racism—and their responsibility for it as a beneficiary of it—are explained to them. They may even double down on their commitment to colorblindness, claiming that by bringing the discussion back to race, you are the one engaging in racism.
The myth of colorblindness is actively harmful. It lets white people off the hook for their complicity in sustaining the institutional and ideological underpinnings of white supremacy by narrowly defining racism and reducing it to a matter of individual choice.
Even as they disavow overt racism, white people act in myriad ways to bolster institutional racism. This is reflected in the ways that white people speak to each other about racial topics—often without ever explicitly mentioning race at all. This phenomenon is known as “race talk.”
Many experiences of ordinary American life are thick with racial meaning, even when they appear on the surface to be race-neutral. For example, white people automatically associate blackness with crime, danger, and undesirability. In part, this stems from living in highly segregated communities, as most white Americans still do. If you seldom come into contact with people of color, then your perceptions of them will come from stereotypes and media-amplified misrepresentations.
White people will engage in race talk on the topic of black crime by expressing concern about the “character” of a neighborhood, the test scores at a local school, or declining property values. Race does not have to be mentioned at all. It is assumed by all white participants in such a conversation that these negative attributes are definitionally tied to blackness. Such conversations serve to reinforce solidarity between white people (a topic we’ll delve into later in the chapter) and solidify white attitudes about the rightful ordering of the racial hierarchy.
These attitudes, in turn, guide white actions. Thus, in a phenomenon known as “white flight,” white Americans will leave neighborhoods that are becoming more diverse (one study showed that even a tiny 7 percent African-American population in a neighborhood can trigger white flight), citing the desire to send their children to “good” schools. Although it’s not spoken, the assumption is that a “good” school is one attended by few minorities.
Of course, such actions lead to real-world consequences, like underfunded schools and segregation, that are enormously harmful to people of color.
This all speaks to a crucial point—nearly all white people contribute to systemically racist outcomes, even when they believe themselves to harbor no ill will toward people of color. These outcomes matter far more than whatever intentions white people may believe themselves to be motivated by.
Even as white people continue in the belief that “race” is an attribute only held by people of color and not white people, they still subtly reinforce white racial identity—and thus, white supremacy—to one another.
In 2007, sociologists Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin studied the ways in which white people expressed ideas and attitudes about race to one another. They found that innate beliefs in white supremacy were strong, even among supposedly liberal and progressive white millennials. They found that white millennials in college settings frequently told racist jokes, all while persisting in the belief that they were open-minded and tolerant on the subject of race.
The white group dynamics during the telling of such jokes tended to be similar—protagonists telling the joke; bystanders or spectators approving it through their silence or non-objection; and, occasionally, a dissenter who objected to the joke.
But Picca and Feagin argued that even the dissenter played an important role in this performative exercise among white peers. When the dissenter voiced their opposition, their peers tended to shut them down, saying that it was just a joke and that the dissenter was being too uptight or humorless. All of this amounted to a performative ritual of white solidarity that strongly reinforced white supremacist beliefs and actions.
Another way in which white people use coded language and double talk to reinforce white supremacy is through nostalgia and longing for the past. White people will often invoke some ill-defined bygone era as one in which life was simpler or better.
Implicit in this kind of reminiscence is that things were better for white people. To pine for a past historical era in an American context is to romanticize the days when people of color faced even greater risks than they do today, including slavery, lynching, internment, and disenfranchisement.
It is not surprising that white people have the privilege of longing for the past. For most of American history, white people’s position atop the nation’s political, social, and economic hierarchy was entirely unchallenged. Viewed in this context, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” explicitly plays to this sense of white identity and nostalgia for a bygone age—and, more ominously, white people’s bitterness and rage at the idea that today they must share some measure of power and influence with non-whites.
The implicit conditioning of white supremacist ideas also occurs through how white people define and order physical spaces.
We’ve already explored how white people instinctively view African-American communities as dangerous and crime-ridden. This is despite the fact that studies of census data and crime statistics do not support this belief, certainly when controlling for other factors like poverty (although it does not stop police from detaining and imprisoning men of color at far higher levels than their white counterparts).
White Americans overwhelmingly inhabit nearly all-white spaces in their neighborhoods, schools, clubs, and workplaces. For a typical white person, this starts at a very young age. A white child goes to a school where the vast majority of teachers and students are white; they see their white parents socializing with a nearly all-white group of friends; they go off to attend a college where the professors are predominantly white; and, ultimately, land a job where their boss and the majority of their colleagues will be white. The message that this sends to white people who grow up in such a society is that whiteness is natural and normal. Indeed, it is impossible not to receive this message.
It also fosters a belief that there is no space where a white person can go where they will not feel welcome and included. Contrast this with the experiences of many people of color, who frequently feel that there are spaces where their presence is decidedly abnormal and unwelcome.
For example, while white parents may fear sending their children to a majority-minority school, many black children in cities like Boston and Chicago were bussed out of their neighborhoods into majority-white schools during the 1970s as part of court-ordered desegregation efforts. White children, however, were never bussed out of their neighborhoods to attend predominantly black schools. The work of desegregation was always to be borne by people of color.
Black children at these majority-white schools experienced harassment and even violence at the hands of the white students and teachers. White parents, meanwhile, mounted furious (and, ultimately, successful) assaults against attempts to desegregate neighborhood schools.
All of this sends a powerful signal that there are boundaries that keep people of color out of certain spaces—but they are one-way boundaries, that only white people remain free to cross.
Because these desegregation efforts largely failed in the face of white resistance, most white people today live in segregated worlds where they seldom interact with people of color. Yet white people frequently invoke this fact of their upbringing as a way of absolving themselves of any complicity in supporting a racist society. For them, it is a get-out-of-jail-free card. They cannot be racist, they argue, because they grew up in a “sheltered” all-white community.
In this telling, the absence of racial diversity is meant to signify an absence of racism. Of course, the opposite is true—“sheltered,” all-white communities are, by their very existence, products of institutional racism. Living in such a place would amplify one’s racist conditioning by making one more likely to form ideas about black people from stereotypes and media misrepresentations rather than from genuine interactions. Even describing such an upbringing as “sheltered” is suffused with racial hostility, as it implies that one was “sheltered” from the dangerous presence of people of color.
But one does not merely passively receive the advantages of whiteness by accident of birth. Partaking in the benefits of whiteness itself bolsters white supremacy—and shatters the idea of white racial innocence. Even if a white person, when confronted with this reality, is able to overcome their white fragility and acknowledge the extraordinary advantages of being white, this is only a first step.
The systems of oppression that maintain those advantages (and, by definition, deny them to people of color) have been consciously built over centuries. A true dismantling of systemic racism must go beyond mere acknowledgment of its existence. White people must not treat racism as merely a neutral force of nature that simply happens to people of color, as if it were a weather event. It is something done to people of color by white people. To profess one’s own racial innocence is to further one’s culpability for systemic racism.
Think about how you can push back against racist social conditioning.
Have you ever engaged in “race talk”? If so, briefly describe what was discussed and how discussions like these contribute to the reinforcement of the racial hierarchy.
Have you ruled out living in certain areas because of bad schools or declining property values? Do you think your concerns were warranted? Explain why or why not.
Whether or not you think your concerns were warranted, how do you think your actions, and the similar actions of other white people, have impacted the racial makeup of the communities you've ruled out?
Now that we’ve explored the roots of white supremacy and the ways in which white supremacist power structures profoundly shape how white people collectively view their position in society, we need to see how this plays out in the real world. Specifically, we need to understand the ways in which the powerful social conditioning we outlined in the last chapter feeds misconceptions about what racism actually is.
This is important, because these misconceptions inform how white people view people of color (specifically African-Americans) and how they are able to deny their own culpability in reinforcing racial inequity—a culpability that is rarely questioned because of instinctive white fragility. We also need to examine how these racial attitudes (and the denial of them) have very real and painful consequences for black people.
As we’ve seen, overt expressions of racial hostility on the part of white people have become taboo since the civil rights era. Whereas whites of previous generations would openly and proudly proclaim their belief in the justness of white supremacy, few would do so now. Most white people today openly profess to believe that racism (however they define it) is immoral.
But this shift in what white people are willing to publicly express has done nothing to dismantle the very real power of white supremacy in American life. In many ways, in fact, it’s reinforced racism by making it less visible for white people and giving them plausible deniability for their responsibility in upholding it.
Of course, we know from the previous chapter that white people receive messages about white superiority as soon as they enter the world—from media misrepresentation of minorities, the segregated spaces most white people inhabit, and the absence of minorities from positions of power in key American institutions.
Racism is not defined by specific behaviors committed by cruel and depraved individuals. It is a structural phenomenon, a framework that defines how we define our place (and that of others) in society.
White people are able to deny the presence of racism precisely because they treat it as specific behaviors committed by specific people, rather than the structural phenomenon that it actually is. In this wrong conception of racism, racism functions like an act of criminality. The possibility of it always exists, but it has to be consciously and knowingly “committed” by someone.
Thus, if one refrains from certain actions (like the use of certain racial slurs) one cannot be racist. Racism thus gets watered down to something that only “bad” people do. This is at the root of white fragility—white people will furiously deny their racially problematic behaviors and patterns of thought because they view any discussion of them as an assault on their character.
This is fundamentally not how racism works. Racism is a force woven deeply and permanently into every institution of American life. The intentions or moral positions of individual white people are irrelevant here. Racism is a system that we all participate in, that we cannot escape from, and that imposes real costs on people of color (and real benefits for white people).
It is seen in:
Two common manifestations of white deniability (and white fragility) are claims of colorblindness and a professed color celebration, or appreciation of token diversity. They are intended to show that the white speaker is personally free from the social conditioning of white supremacy.
These, however, are merely retreats into the myth of individualism and a refusal to engage with one’s racial biases. Such biases are impossible to escape, as no white person is able to throw off the social conditioning of being raised in a white supremacist society—we are all products of our environment, whether or not we choose to accept it.
We’ve already exposed the hollowness of colorblindness, but it’s worth exploring in greater detail here. Examples of colorblind statements might be:
These claims blatantly misrepresent the true, insidious nature of racism. It is impossible not to see race, because race is the defining element of the American experience. Moreover, to deny its existence is to invalidate the experiences of people of color, whose lives have very much been shaped by their racial identity.
Similarly, it is impossible to “treat everyone equally” because all individuals have different needs and different relationships to us. Treating different individuals differently based upon circumstance is not the issue. We treat people differently for many reasons that are independent of race. This is a basic part of socialization. The problem arises when this differential treatment is directed at members of groups as a whole and leads to disadvantageous and unjust outcomes.
Meanwhile, a statement of color celebration might be the claim that one can’t be racist because they grew up or live in a diverse city like New York or that they have black friends. But this, too, is absurd. The mere ability to be in the presence of people of color (as one would inevitably be in a city like New York) without becoming overtly hostile or agitated defines racism so narrowly that it deprives it of any functional meaning. If that’s the standard for racism, then racism would be a very rare phenomenon.
Similarly, having individual friendships with people of color does not invalidate or cancel out the powerful social conditioning that comes with being raised in a white supremacist society. This is especially true if white people refuse to discuss race with their friends of color—thereby denying their friends’ lived experiences.
All of these statements amount to excuses, a refusal to engage in reflection about one’s own participation in a white supremacist society. Instead of helping to spark a dialogue and move the needle forward on dismantling racism, these reflexive defenses forestall any discussion and analysis. In doing so, they help preserve and bolster white supremacy.
Racial learning is a process, and one needs to be willing to engage in tough self-reflection to make progress toward it. Racism is a continuum or a spectrum. A white person will never be entirely free of racist attitudes, but with honesty and a willingness to question one’s own racially problematic behavior, one can move toward the more just end of the continuum.
But any analysis of racism should focus on the real victims of it—people of color and, specifically, African-Americans. While other non-white groups have undeniably faced persecution in the United States, black people serve as the ultimate racial “other” for whites.
Some of this is due to more modern manifestations of white supremacy, like media portrayals of black communities as crime-ridden dystopias. But it also comes from the ways in which white identity itself is inextricably tied to notions of black inferiority. As we saw in Chapter 1, our ideas of black racial inferiority arose as a means to justify the systemic oppression of black people during the era of colonization. Before this time, concepts of “black” and “white” would have had little meaning. White people from different parts of Europe during the ancient and medieval periods had no idea of whiteness as a shared characteristic between them.
It was only upon contact with and enslavement of Africans by the millions beginning in the 16th century that a concept of whiteness began to solidify. Of course, for one race to be inferior, the other must, by definition, be superior. The powerful ideology of white supremacy thus needs black people to sustain itself. White identity thus has never existed without black inferiority.
White people commonly project their own fears and insecurities about themselves onto black people as a means of assuaging their guilt and anxiety about the systems of oppression they maintain. They do this by accusing black people of vices of which white people are, in fact, collectively guilty.
White notions of black laziness, for example, ignore the real history of slavery, in which black people toiled in brutal conditions on sugar and cotton plantations—all while their labor was stolen by white planters. Similarly, white ideas of black people as violent or dangerous overlook the experience of black life in America, which has been marked by brutal violence and oppression at the hands of white people.
Anti-black racism is a complex and ever-changing social force that can take on many different forms, at once flexible and durable. It can even masquerade as benevolence in the form of the “white savior” cultural trope, in which black people require the intervention of kind-hearted white people in order to be rescued from circumstances of poverty or oppression.
Such portrayals, common in Hollywood films like Green Book or The Blind Side deny the agency of black people and portray their fates as being inextricably linked to the benevolence and goodwill of white people. Often, these films show a prejudiced white character overcoming their prejudice thanks to an unlikely friendship with a black person who teaches them the error of their ways.
These portrayals, however well-meaning they may be, also inhibit progress on race. They cast racism as an individual vice (ignoring its real, structural nature) and put the onus for overcoming it on black people themselves, who must teach their oppressors why their racist attitudes are wrong. This absolves white people for their culpability in maintaining racism and allows them to shirk responsibility for doing the hard work of challenging it.
Another great source of white fragility is the fear of black advancement or upward mobility. This underlies the centuries-old white contempt for “uppity” black people who dare to step out of line or question the justness of the racial hierarchy.
Any attempts to dismantle or even simply modify white supremacy are lambasted by white people as measures that confer an “unfair” or “undeserved” advantage for black people. Affirmative action in particular is a flashpoint of deep resentment for white people, who believe that it forces companies to hire unqualified black candidates over qualified white applicants.
This is all completely untrue. Affirmative action was implemented in the 1960s to combat the very real and demonstrable job discrimination that African-Americans faced. It only guaranteed that qualified minority job-seekers have access to the same opportunities as other applicants, and it only ever applied to jobs in the public sector. Ironically, white women ended up being its biggest beneficiaries, not people of color.
Nevertheless, white myths and paranoia about the program were the decisive factors in its dismantlement in subsequent decades. Today, it is all but nonexistent. Beyond affirmative action, white people continue to express dismay at black advancement when they:
These attempts by people of color to highlight the racial inequities in American life put white culpability front and center. As we’ve seen, because of their limited conception of racism as a personal character trait, white people collectively take these efforts as a deep affront. The white fragility on display in response to these efforts points to a collective unwillingness on the part of white people to seriously engage with the presence and consequences of white supremacy.
In this final chapter, we’ll bring the discussion back to white fragility and how it reinforces racist power structures and racist outcomes:
White people react harshly to even the most minor challenges to their status in the racial hierarchy. In anti-racist or anti-bias training seminars, DiAngelo recounts instances in which white participants were made aware of racially problematic statements or behaviors they’d engaged in during the course of the seminar. Inevitably, no matter how gently and constructively these criticisms were offered, they would be met with the same set of reactions, including:
All of these responses invalidate the experiences of people of color and shut down the possibility of real engagement with the reality that all white people benefit from and continue to uphold white supremacy. They make the common mistake of conflating intention with impact. One’s intentions with regard to people of color are completely irrelevant when they result in racist outcomes.
White people lose face from these challenges, because they believe (incorrectly) that they are being attacked personally. In situations where myths of meritocracy are being challenged (as in a discussion of how white people benefit from racially biased hiring decisions, for example), white people may also feel that their sense of having “earned” their position is being called into question.
Unable to reconcile these challenges with their belief that they are good people, white people retreat into white fragility, which helps them save face. Many even use the language of violence to describe what they’re feeling when confronted with examples of their own racism, claiming that they feel “assaulted” or “traumatized.” One woman DiAngelo encountered even claimed that she might be suffering a heart attack after hearing that an anecdote she relayed was racially problematic. This woman was saying that even the mere discussion of racism could result in her death.
Some white people even cling to the idea that it is actually white people who face systemic racism rather than people of color (distressingly, a recent social survey found that 55 percent of whites believed this).
But we should not make the mistake of characterizing white fragility as merely a defensive mechanism. Rather, white fragility is a powerful means of reinforcing white supremacy and shutting down any challenges to it by people of color.
By casting the white person in the discussion as the victim, white fragility enables white people to command social resources of time and attention. For example, a white woman brought to tears after being forced to confront her complicity in systemic racism might compel other people (even people of color) to comfort and reassure her that she isn’t racist.
Or, a white man who reacts angrily and defensively in the same situation will similarly refocus the attention on his angry and bombastic reaction. These tactics draw attention away from the discussion of systemic racism, shut down potential challenges to it, and make white concerns and white anxieties the focus.
Being able to set the terms of discussion, and define what is and is not acceptable, is itself a powerful manifestation of white privilege. White fragility demands that people of color as a means of social, emotional, economic, and even physical survival walk a constant tightrope around their white colleagues and neighbors. The cumulative effect of white fragility is to discourage people of color from challenging white supremacy by dramatically raising the emotional costs of doing so.
One common expression of white fragility, especially on the part of white women, is crying. Author DiAngelo documents several instances during her career as an anti-racist educator in which white women sobbed and broke down upon hearing stories from people of color about their experiences with racism, or hearing about their own culpability for racist outcomes in society.
While these women no doubt felt that their outbursts of emotion came from a genuine place of solidarity and empathy, it was seldom experienced that way by people of color. To them, the crying was self-indulgent behavior that sucked up the energy in the room and redirected the conversation toward the emotional distress of the crying white woman, not the people of color taking great personal risk in sharing their stories of oppression.
White tears are a powerful manifestation of white fragility, a way of neutralizing or stopping a discussion about racism by transforming it into a conversation about an individual white woman’s hurt feelings.
The trope of a distressed white woman in a racially mixed setting also conjures powerful and traumatic historical memories for people of color, especially black men. During the era of mass lynchings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, white mobs frequently used the supposed (and often fabricated) threat that black men posed toward white women as a pretext for horrific acts of violence. Thus, black men learned to navigate their role in the racial hierarchy by being especially sensitive to the emotions of white women.
Because of this historical memory, black men often feel they must instinctively minimize white female distress, lest they draw the ire of white men—who see themselves as the protectors of white women and who occupy the dominant position in the gender and racial hierarchies. The crying reinforces this racial hierarchy by placing white comfort and white feelings front and center, thereby justifying white claims to emotional resources, time, and attention.
The lesson for white people is clear. Racism hurts and even kills people. Your hurt feelings pale in comparison to the enormous toll of centuries of racism. It’s simply not about you and your sadness.
The work of recognizing and shedding (as much as possible) one’s racist conditioning as a white person can be extremely difficult. But it is important to do if you’re serious about your professed opposition to racism. You cannot tackle systemic racism if you cannot identify and come to terms with the ways in which you unfairly benefit from and perpetuate it.
Because racism is a structural phenomenon and not an individual character trait, there is no need to get defensive when one’s own racially problematic behavior is brought to light. Moreover, because of your dominant position within the racial hierarchy, the feedback you are receiving poses no threat to you. If you do feel threatened, you must work on fortifying your own racial stamina.
Instead of retreating into fragility, look at the feedback, especially when it comes from a person of color, as an opportunity to learn and grow. Your response shouldn’t be, “How dare you!” It should instead be, “Thank you.”
Racial healing can only begin when white people shed their reflexive defensiveness and build greater capacity to be uncomfortable with examinations of their own privilege and their contributions to racist power structures. White people must discard the myth that their white racial identity doesn’t exist and accept the truth that it powerfully shapes how they view the world and their role in it.
Becoming more authentic in one’s attitudes toward race and seeking knowledge is the beginning of change, whether that comes from forging more genuine cross-racial relationships or getting involved in anti-racist groups. The discomfort is not incidental—it is key to growth and to uncovering one’s inevitable racial blind spots.
The process of disrupting racism, after all, involves acknowledging one’s unfair benefits and advantages as a white person and then working to cede those privileges. It’s not easy—racism is a system from which all white people benefit. If anti-racism entailed zero sacrifice on the part of whites, racism would be far easier to overcome.
The consequences of racism for people of color are very real and very dire. White people have a moral responsibility to educate themselves and take the initiative to disrupt and combat racism wherever they see it. Some concrete ways to get involved with anti-racism include:
When experiencing your own white fragility, try to:
Most of all, it is critical that this be a self-directed journey. You as a white person must do the hard work yourself. It is not the responsibility of people of color to guide you through your anti-racist education or to accommodate your white fragility when you are confronted with your own culpability for racism.
This work will often be challenging and difficult, forcing you to grapple with aspects of your own privilege and complicity. But it is necessary work if we as a society are serious about rolling back the legacy of racism.
If you feel threatened by someone suggesting you’ve made a racist comment, what is threatening about that suggestion? In other words, how does it pose a threat to you?
If you feel threatened, how can you fortify your own racial stamina?
What steps can you take to become more anti-racist?