White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism

Back when I was a college professor of English, we were undertaking curriculum review, seeking to revise our course offerings in order to affirm more “multicultural” and “ethnic” literature.  Some of us revised our syllabi to include more non-white writers and voices.  I think our efforts were noteworthy, but there is little doubt the Western, European, white literary tradition remained fully intact and fully dominant in our curriculum. Perhaps, this cannot entirely be avoided in an “English” department, which focuses on reading/writing the English language and literature written in English, not to mention the dearth of non-white writers and voices in English given their history of oppression in a white-dominant culture.

At best the changes we made led to more conversations among faculty and students regarding race relations, colonization, white supremacy, and systemic, historically-based racism reflected in our English language and literature.  At worst these changes merely cosmeticized and therefore reinforced what remained an essentially white supremacist curriculum.

I remember an occasion when I was discussing our Ethnic Literature course with an indigenous faculty member. He pointed out to me that the effect of relegating non-white literature to a separate, “ethnic” category implied that white literature did not have ethnicity, that white literature was the norm, whereas non-white literature was some kind of aberration. That was a moment of revelation I have never forgotten. 

Of course, I had routinely checked the box for white or Caucasian when asked for my race on an informational form, but somehow it had not quite sunk in that my whiteness is just as much a race or ethnicity as all the other categories.  Furthermore, multiculturalism includes whiteness as a separate culture distinct from non-white cultures.  I was more likely to think of white culture regionally—Southern, Southwestern, Irish, German, etc.

Such is the power of white supremacy.  As whites we are socially conditioned to think of ourselves as the norm, and the entitled norm at that, and to think of non-whites as deviations from that norm.  In other words, whites are more color-blind when it comes to themselves than when it comes to non-whites.

This book by Robin DiAngelo (2018) not only analyzes white supremacy as a system of both conscious and unconscious patterns of racism, it also documents and demonstrates in example after example how white people resist acknowledging their participation in this system, much less accepting it and taking responsibility for changing both themselves and the larger system.

Until white people, including, and perhaps especially, white liberals, move beyond this resistance and open themselves to learning how to be authentic allies of those fighting for their liberation from oppression, we will continue to be part of the problem, benefiting from and reinforcing the system of oppression, instead of part of the solution.  Good intentions won’t cut it.  Genuine humility, consciousness-raising, and transformation are called for.

This book can be the beginning of a long journey during which white people learn how they can contribute to the work of dismantling white supremacy and achieving racial equity.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Frederick Douglass (see previous post) is cited in Michelle Alexander’s 2010 study of structural racism in our contemporary American criminal justice system, as are W. E. B. Dubois and James Baldwin. 

These authors (and others) help to underscore the historical perspective Alexander brings to her analysis.  Douglass worked for and witnessed the abolition of slavery, only to see the rise of a new era of Jim Crow.  Dubois, the first African American sociologist, studied the “problem of the color line” at the turn of the next century in his well known The Souls of Black Folk.  James Baldwin witnessed the dismantling of Jim Crow and contributed to the rise of an era of Civil Rights.  Alexander documents this history to show that just as the abolition of slavery was followed by Jim Crow, the era of Civil Rights has been succeeded by a new form of Jim Crow, an ostensibly colorblind but actually racist system of mass incarceration.

Alexander meticulously substantiates how the seemingly race neutral War on Drugs and the criminal justice system function to imprison vast numbers of black and brown men far out of proportion to their percentage of the population compared to that of white offenders.  She then shows how discrimination continues after release from prison in employment, housing, voting, etc., and outlines the parallels between the current form of legalized discrimination and the historical Jim Crow laws.

As I read her book for the second time in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case (see previous post), I was struck with how the current drive for voting restrictions offers yet another example of a contemporary effort to disenfranchise people of color under the guise of supposedly race neutral policies.

Alexander calls for a new social movement to dismantle, not only this new form of what constitutes a racial caste system, but also the whole social structure that serves to support and sustain it.  Her book is not written in a style that is likely to spark such a movement.  Though it is strong on advocacy, it presents a largely academic case with a carefully constructed argument that is thoroughly documented.  While this approach establishes the credibility of her thesis, it may not have the popular appeal and broad accessibility to inspire the kind of activism she says is necessary to transform the deeply embedded system of colorblind racism that undergirds our contemporary form of racial caste.

A different kind of style and rhetoric, perhaps based in more visual and technological mass media, will be necessary to motivate people to activism.

What Alexander has done, however, is to provide the substantive academic basis for more popular forms of advocacy and agitation.