White people must be less fragile

I learned a new concept recently: white fragility.

To be more accurate, I learned the label for the concept. This label, coined by Dr. Robin D’Angelo and used as the title of her 2016 book, may be new, but the concept itself dates back decades, if not centuries.


White fragility refers to the discomfort that white people like me feel when talking about race, and to the defensiveness we exhibit as a result. Any indication that we may have benefited socially, academically and professionally from the color of our skin will cause us to feel that we are being attacked.


As a result, we blow off such discussions or exit them entirely. If we stay, we may argue that such prejudices do not apply to us, that we are more enlightened than the next person, that we don’t “see color.” We may even start to feel slighted ourselves, that we are being made to feel guilty for being white.


I have suffered from white fragility, 100 percent. I’d like to say that I’ve recovered, but I’m learning that it’s more about the journey than the destination.


Acknowledging white fragility first requires acknowledging white privilege. People who are white must recognize that, in American society, certain advantages have come built in.


This doesn’t mean that our road has been smooth or that we haven’t earned what we have. It does mean, however, that it has been easier for us to get jobs and loans, to avoid entanglements with the law, and to find people who look like us in books and movies. We have benefitted, unknowingly in most cases, from institutionalized racism.


That word, “racism,” and the equally pejorative “racist,” cause white people’s hackles to rise, which is part of the problem.


D’Angelo, in an interview on the Teaching Tolerance website, argues that society needs to change its definitions. “As long as you define a racist as an individual who intentionally is mean, based on race, you’re going to feel defensive,” she notes. “When I say you’ve been shaped by a racist system—that it is inevitable that you have racist biases and patterns and investments—you’re going to feel offended by that. You will hear it as a comment on your moral character.”



Instead, she says, society must start to think of racism as “a system that we have been raised in,” one that is beyond considerations of good or bad.” Realizing that American society is steeped in racism and that we have all been affected allows us to move to the next step: Overcoming it.


And that’s tough work. As a place to start, Salon writer Sarah Watts recommends four questions we can ask ourselves during discussions about race: Am I trying to change the subject? Am I using inappropriate behavior to deflect? Am I getting defensive or angry? Am I going out of my way not to focus on “the negative”?


Avoiding discomfort is not the goal. Experiencing it is. Because it’s only from a place of discomfort that we can start to change.


So when we respond to discussions of race by saying that “all lives matter,” all we do is reaffirm the status quo, a world where “all” has traditionally not included everybody. Or when we argue that “blue lives matter,” we co-opt a movement that was designed to focus on one specific group and move it in a different direction.


In both instances, we attempt to shut down a discussion of race because hand-holding messages of peace or supporting law enforcement are less squirmy.


One could argue plausibly that the resurgence of white nationalism in this country over the last few years is a knee-jerk reaction to white fragility, a way for some factions to reassert a place of dominance, perhaps subconsciously, in the social and political hierarchy.


Hence, the strong attachment to the Confederate flag, the nostalgia for some halcyon age when life was allegedly simpler (i.e., less diverse), when “girls were girls and men were men,” to quote the theme song from “All in the Family,” which could serve as a rallying cry for a certain type of backward-longing American.



And, if I’m being completely frank, white fragility could be expanded to “dominant fragility” and used to explain our defensiveness in discussing issues like immigration, female autonomy and the challenges of a living wage.


But such an expansion makes me guilty of changing the subject, something that is too easy to do and that has happened too often where race is concerned.


Because white people like me need to be less fragile, to speak less and listen more.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com


@cschillig on Twitter