80 pages • 2 hours read
Robin DiAngeloA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“In speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am yet again centering white people and the white voice.”
In this footnote, DiAngelo acknowledges the tension of her position as a white person speaking to a white audience. She makes it clear that she understands that centering both white people’s experience and their understanding seems counter to her project. Yet it is also vital to her project to draw in a wider audience of white people who might exempt themselves from the messages in the book.
“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.”
In a longer discussion of how multiracial people might fit themselves into the context of White Fragility’s arguments, DiAngelo introduces the critical idea that a white supremacist society will always privilege whiteness and anything perceived as white-adjacent. Later, DiAngelo also uses this argument to illustrate why, for poor or working-class white people, whiteness takes precedence over class: It is seen as a way to escape one’s class position for wealthier, whiter areas and positions.
“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.”
This succinctly summarizes the book’s first arguments and definitions: Key to understanding racism and white supremacy is seeing them as systems, not as individual actions or decisions. Yet DiAngelo frequently reminds readers that individual white people are “beneficiaries,” and thus are responsible for examining that privilege and undoing the systems.
“I have never met a white person without an opinion on racism.”
In suggesting that white people are complicit in racism and defensive about it, DiAngelo contradicts narratives about race and racism prevalent in American culture, like the idea of individuality—white people’s claim that they are separate from whiteness and racism. In order to go against this, DiAngelo references common patterns shared by all or almost all white people; for example, in this quote, she reminds her audience that all white people have opinions “on racism” even if they deny being part of racism or being racist themselves.
“Further, the colonizers who came were not free of their own cultural conditioning; they brought with them deeply internalized patterns of domination and submission.”
Before European colonization, the concepts of race and racism did not exist. The colonizers who came to the United States already believed there were superior and inferior types of people; in creating race, the colonizers made these ideas more concrete, even as the definitions of these racial categories shifted over time.
“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.”
Most white people in the United States, and many people in general, believe that race exists because of genetics or other biological characteristics. Yet even when people understand that race is a false set of categorizations, they often fall back on assumptions that racial hierarchies exist because of less visible categories like effort and talent. These ideologies are dangerous because they obscure the larger system of white supremacy and allow individual white people to continue benefiting without acknowledging the harm in doing so.
“The very context in which I entered the world was organized hierarchically by race.”
DiAngelo frequently weaves between the personal and the systemic, making it possible for white readers to connect their individual experiences with larger social patterns and structures. This emphasizes the small ways that white privilege functions in individual lives. For example, during DiAngelo’s birth, the hospital was organized “hierarchically by race,” and her treatment was better simply because her parents were white.
“Belonging has settled deep into my consciousness; it shapes my daily thoughts and concerns, what I reach for in life, and what I expect to find.”
White people are socialized into believing that they are part of a valuable, worthy group. In addition, white people feel a right to have a sense of comfort and belonging in any setting, an idea perpetuated by systemic racism and supported by the behaviors of white people themselves, who engage in white solidarity and white fragility to maintain this comfort. DiAngelo points out the way her own sense of this comfort shapes her “daily thoughts and concerns.”
“For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen.”
An extremely damaging aspect of racism is the false narratives that racism is an act, not a system or set of beliefs: If racism has not been “commit[ed],” it has not happened, so white people remain guiltless. Unfortunately, this false narrative leads white people to have extreme responses when they are identified as participants in racism.
“In the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other,’ and we must grapple with this relationship, for it is a foundational aspect of the racial socialization underlying white fragility.”
A key dimension of white supremacy is the prevalence of anti-Blackness in United States culture. DiAngelo argues that anti-Blackness is the foundation of a white supremacist society and is critical to understanding white fragility and its function.
“To put it bluntly, I believe that the white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others.”
One of the most complicated ideas to explain to a lay white audience is that white people have been deeply impacted by the systems that perpetuate racism. For instance, much of the anti-Blackness in American culture comes from white guilt and shame about the immense harm they have perpetrated towards people of color. This bolsters DiAngelo’s arguments about where white fragility comes from; it would be impossible to explain white peoples’ extreme emotional reactions without understanding the well of that emotion.
“The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture in which racial disparity is infused limits white people’s ability to form authentic connections across racial lines and perpetuates a cycle that keeps racism in place.”
White fragility limits white people’s ability to fully engage cross-racially or even with other white people. When white people “retreat from discomfort,” they can’t have honest, vulnerable conversations about race and racism that might create opportunities for growth. This also perpetuates racism, since white people who display white fragility are not able to acknowledge their own participation in white supremacy.
“White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism.”
Though many white people might argue (because of white fragility) that they are not racist and do not benefit from white supremacy, they actually exist in a state of “white equilibrium.” In this state, white people can be completely oblivious, unaware of their advantages, and ignorant about the harm racism causes, while maintaining the idea that they are “good people.” This dangerous equilibrium perpetuates the cycle of racism and allows individual white people to escape culpability and accountability.
“White people are receptive to my presentation as long as it remains abstract. The moment I name some racially problematic dynamic or action happening in the room in the moment […] white fragility erupts.”
When DiAngelo is training white people, they are often willing to learn as long as she keeps her presentation subject at a distance. Yet when she calls out something happening in the room, the same white people react with white fragility. This is a common dynamic of white fragility: White people are unwilling to learn about race and racism when it is uncomfortable. Worse, when a white person feels put under the microscope about being racist, they respond with white fragility instead of being open to growth.
“1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant—it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it’s on me to build my racial stamina. 2. Thank you.”
DiAngelo articulates a better framework for white people who hear feedback about their racism or racist beliefs. She states only two rules. The first is to accept and embrace feedback no matter where or how it is given. The second is to thank the person giving the feedback. Due to the fact that most white people respond to race-focused feedback negatively, it is critical for white people to practice building their “racial stamina” in order to begin hearing this feedback and moving forward.
“Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.”
White people should enter conversations about race and racism aware that racism is always happening around them and through them. With this knowledge, they can examine how racism is playing out in a particular scenario and address it. The good/bad binary keeps white people from engaging in this work, making individual white people feel like saying they are racist will mark them as bad. This is reductionist and ignores the fact that all white people benefit from and participate in white supremacy.
“The term white tears refers to all the ways, both literally and metaphorically, that white fragility manifests itself through white people’s laments over how hard racism is on us.”
It is highly common for white people to turn a conflict about racism into an opportunity to receive sympathy. One of the biggest misconceptions about racism is that white people are in any way its victims; while DiAngelo frequently references the damage that racism does to white people, they are the dominant beneficiaries of all that white supremacy has to offer. As a result, when white people redirect a conversation or conflict with “white tears,” they derail any potential progress and cause additional harm.
“But emotions are political in two key ways. First, our emotions are shaped by our biases and beliefs, our cultural frameworks.”
When white people display extreme emotions, like when white women cry, they are engaging in a political act, no matter their intention. The emotions that white people use to redirect conversations about race and racism are political because they negate any potential anti-racist growth and potentially harm other people in the space. Emotions are shaped by “cultural frameworks,” so white people’s emotions are impacted by white supremacy; when white people express emotions through white fragility, they are projecting white supremacy.
“Whether intended or not, when a white woman cries over some aspect of racism, all the attention immediately goes to her, demanding time, energy, and attention from everyone in the room when they should be focused on ameliorating racism. While she is given attention, the people of color are yet again abandoned and/or blamed.”
White women’s tears are a frequent white fragility occurrence during discussions of race and racism. DiAngelo argues that white women’s tears are dangerous not just because of their historical and political significance, but also because they take up all of the attention and make it impossible to continue working on “ameliorating racism.”
“By legitimizing white women as the targets of harm, both white men and women accrue social capital.”
Though generally only white women predictably cry when racially uncomfortable, white men have historically supported this response, rushing to comfort or defend a crying white woman. As the dominant members of society, white men have the power to give social capital by supporting white women behaving in a racially fragile way.
“We also need to examine our responses toward other people’s emotions and how they may reinscribe gender and race hierarchies.”
How we respond to other people’s emotions is also political. In discussions of race and racism, white women’s and white men’s emotions are often the center, while people of color are ignored or berated for their responses. It is critical to examine one’s responses to “other people’s emotions” and look at whether these responses are biased based on race, gender, or other systems of oppression.
“How have we managed not to know, when the information is all around us?”
In a poignant question, DiAngelo suggests that it is absurd for white people to be so ignorant about the systems and consequences of racism in the United States. The evidence of white supremacy is “all around us,” yet white people remain largely unaware and defensive about their ignorance. While acknowledging that this ignorance is partially the result of the system of white supremacy, DiAngelo challenges white people to begin the difficult work of understanding more than they currently do about race and racism.
“Many people of color have assured me that they will not give up on me despite my racist patterns; they expect that I will have racist behavior given the society that socialized me. What they are looking for is not perfection but the ability to talk about what happened, the ability to repair.”
DiAngelo reassures white readers that people of color will not condemn them for examining and learning from “racist patterns.” In fact, people of color usually expect that white people will behave in racist ways. The real work is for white people to demonstrate that they are willing to listen, learn, and grow, rather than shutting down or behaving defensively.
“Most importantly, we must break the silence about race and racism with other white people.”
Breaking white solidarity is a critical aspect of disrupting white fragility. White solidarity occurs in all kinds of settings and interactions; until white people are willing to consistently break with other white people in public ways, it will be difficult for any real systemic change to occur. DiAngelo challenges white readers to break “the silence.”
“White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.”
As DiAngelo concludes, she reminds readers that there is no way for white people to not participate in white supremacy—the two are inextricably linked. As a result, it is the constant duty of white people to learn, undo, and act in anti-racist ways. Further, white people must be willing to identify their own white fragility and build their racial stamina to tolerate discomfort when challenged.