I discovered “White Fragility” while tearing up in the backseat of a rental car. I’m in an interracial relationship. My boyfriend and I had rented a Mustang for a week in San Francisco. We picked up his friend who lived in the Mission, and I hopped in the back—I didn’t need the leg room. My boyfriend introduced me as ‘Miriam Rice,’ excluding my second last name. Later, they cracked a joke about the satisfaction of ‘keeping the white girl in the back.’ I didn’t want to be ‘the white girl in the back.’ It stung. I reprimanded myself for being so fragile. Can’t I handle the heat of an innocent erasure? a joke? What exactly was making me emotional? The invisibility of my Latinidad next to my Whiteness? I am both Miriam Rice, and Miriam Rice-Rodríguez the names on my U.S. and Panamanian IDs—both names belong to me—so why was it so hard for me to accept this introduction?
I felt ashamed of my whiteness. Afraid of it, even. White is evil. White perpetrated centuries of colonialism, and genocide, then interventionism, and more genocide, in Latin America and the world. I was equating group actions with the morality of individuals—but still, it is hard to offer compassion to the half of me that caused the other half such suffering. Then I found DiAngelo’s book. It was revelatory. I recommend it to all white identifying people. It taught me the imperative of forefronting my whiteness, and offered me a pragmatic path forward in the fight for a racially just society.
Main takeaways from the book include:
1. Name whiteness, debunk white supremacy, and resist white solidarity.
“Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement” (2)
And,
“The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment; belief in racial inferiority is not what triggered unequal treatment.” (16)
2. It is white people’s responsibility to educate each other about race, not people of color.
“The expectation that people of color should teach white people about racism is another aspect of white racial innocence that reinforces several problematic racial assumptions. First, it implies that racism is something that happens to people of color and has nothing to do with us and that we consequently cannot be expected to have any knowledge of it. This framework denies that racism is a relationship in which both groups are involved. By leaving it to people of color to tackle racial issues, we offload the tensions and social dangers of speaking openly onto them. We can ignore the risks ourselves and remain silent on questions of our own culpability.”(64)
3. Build your buffer. Welcome discomfort.
“…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).” (7)
And,
“…we can use [discomfort] as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me?”
Developing these emotional skills and learning about racialized history is absolutely imperative, especially for white women, because:
“The murder of Emment Till is just one example of the history that informs an oft-repeated warning from my African American colleagues: “When a white woman cries, a black man gets hurt.” Not knowing or being sensitive to this history is another example of white centrality, individualism, and lack of racial humility.” (133)
4. Even if your ethnic identity is more nuanced, if you are “white passing,” you experience whiteness externally.
“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…It is on each of us who pass as white to identify how these advantages shape us, not to deny them wholesale.” (18)
5. Anybody is capable of discrimination, but only white people can be racist.
When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions of self-images of individual actors.” (20)
Also,
“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.” (22)
And lastly,
“When I say 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.” (22)
6. Color blindness is harmful.
“While the idea of color blindness may have started out as a well-intentioned strategy for interrupting racism, in practice is has served to deny the reality of racism and thus hold it in place.” (42)
7. Impact matters more than intention.
8. This is not about white saviorism.
“Ultimately, I strive for a less white identity for my own liberation and sense of justice, not to save people of color.” (150)
9. Use “I” statements. Do not assume the white experience is universal.
“First, I try to affirm a person’s perspective before I share mine, and when I do share mine, I try to point the finger inward, not outward.” (150)
10. Circle back.
“When we have an ongoing relationship with someone, it’s fine to take some time and return to the issue later.” (151)
Continued readings
1. Ta-Nahisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”
2. Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped From the Beginning”
3. Toni Morrison