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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Fragility, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
White Fragility
White Supremacy
Racism and the Good/Bad Binary
Individualism, Objectivity, and Meritocracy
Summary
Analysis
Race shapes the lives of white people in the United States by providing white people with a sense of belonging. As DiAngelo moves through her daily life, her race is unremarkable when she looks at images from movies, magazines, or shades of makeup. She belongs with her teachers, counselors, classmates, the heroes in history, her doctors, and her dentists. In almost every situation deemed normal, neutral, or prestigious, DiAngelo belongs racially.
This passage illustrates some of the more subtle ways that white supremacy manifests itself. Because white people are both considered the norm and have the power to shape society according to that norm, they are often oblivious to the ways in which they belong that people of color might not.
Themes
Any situation in which DiAngelo might not belong racially is usually in temporary, easily avoidable situations. In fact, she has been warned to avoid situations in which she would be a minority—other people often present these situations as “scary, dangerous, or ‘sketchy.’” Yet if the environment is good, nice, or valuable, DiAngelo can be confident that she will racially belong there.
DiAngelo doesn’t carry the weight of her race and how others might feel about her. She has countless role models across an array of fields when she looks for a job, and virtually anyone hiring—in addition to the majority of people she’ll work with—will be white like her. Once hired, she won’t have to deal with her coworkers’ assumptions that she only got the job because of her race. Or if there are people of color at the organization who resent her hire, she can lean on her white coworkers. And so she can focus on her work and productivity: the psychological advantage of belonging translates into material returns.
Since she’s white, DiAngelo doesn’t have to deal with the potential discrimination in hiring—returning to the idea that DiAngelo “belongs” virtually anywhere she would want to be—but she also doesn’t have to deal with the potential backlash that she might face from people who assume that she was hired because of her race, not her skillset. This is another aspect of white fragility, in which white people feel that they are being overlooked for jobs despite the fact that people of color have faced much more discrimination in hiring.
Themes
DiAngelo has not been taught to view racism as her responsibility. Raised in a culture of white supremacy, she has an assumption of racial superiority and she doesn’t have to navigate the psychic drain of dealing with racism. In addition, she has freedom of movement. Once, she invited her co-worker Deborah to get away for a weekend in northern Idaho. Deborah pointed out that the town is near a place where the Aryan Nation is building a compound. Even without this openly racist group nearby, Deborah did not want to be isolated in a virtually all-white environment.
Deborah’s concern illustrates the extra considerations that people of color have to give to the spaces they inhabit—she is not as free to visit a rural town as DiAngelo because it is a virtually all-white environment. This is an example of how white supremacy adds mental hardship that white people do not have to deal with in the same way.
Themes
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White people are also held up as the norm for humanity—their race is rarely named. In school, writers that everyone is expected to read include Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare. These writers are seen as representing the universal human experience, while students read Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison for the Black perspective. Virtually any representation of human is based on white people’s norms and images, like images of Adam and Eve, flesh-colored makeup, or educational models of the human body.
That William Shakespeare and Jane Austen represent the “universal” human experience illustrates white people’s perception that they are objective. They believe that they do not have a biased perspective, in contrast to Toni Morrison or James Baldwin who have a “Black perspective.” Yet this conceals the fact that the white experience is not a universal human experience with a distinct bias and viewpoint.
Themes
White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among white people to protect white advantage and not confront other white people about racism. This requires both silence and tacit agreement to protect racial supremacy. Many white people can relate to the big family dinner where an uncle says something racist, but no one challenges him because no one wants to ruin the dinner.
White solidarity is another aspect of white fragility. It is easier for white people to avoid discomfort by not addressing racism, as in the example of the racist uncle at dinner. But this means that racism is allowed to perpetuate unchecked. And it is notable that white people don’t want to “ruin” the dinner by combatting racism, highlighting how even white people know that other white people get defensive when their racist comments are addressed—to the point where argument over addressing racism can “ruin” a dinner.
Themes
There are consequences of breaking white solidarity—accusations of being politically correct or angry, humorless, and combative. When white people stay silent during a racist joke in the workplace, on the other hand, they gain social capital like being fun, cooperative, and a team player. White people justify their silence by not being the person who made the joke, but silence is tacit agreement that allows racism to circulate through the culture.
Again, white fragility is difficult to get around because of the discomfort white people also endure in confronting racism. On the other hand, not confronting racism is rewarded through social capital. Still, it is more important to endure discomfort in order to oppose racism and dismantle white supremacy.
Themes
White people openly reminisce about the “good old days,” but claiming that the past is better than the present is a hallmark of white supremacy. Consider any period in the past from people of color’s perspective: slavery, the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, lynching, mob violence, Japanese American internment, segregation, bans on voting, employment and educational discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, racist media representations, and untold and perverted historical accounts, to name a few. The past was positive for white people, on the other hand, because their positions went unchallenged.
This section illustrates how racism and white supremacy has been embedded in the U.S.’s history, ranging in time and across different racial groups’ experiences. These are just a few examples of different policies that were created based on the belief that white people were superior. These policies then put people of color at an even greater political and economic disadvantage. In this way, white supremacy created a self-fulfilling narrative that continues to this day.
Themes
Even now, there has been no actual loss of power for the white elite. Of the 50 richest people on earth, 29 are American and all of those 29 are white. Similarly, the white working class has always held the top positions in blue-collar fields while resenting people of color. This resentment is misdirected, given that the people who control the economy are the white elite. For example, in the U.S. in the last 30 years, the bottom 50 percent of workers have had zero income growth, whereas incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by 300 percent. Even the call to “Make America Great Again,” DiAngelo says, diverted blame away from the white elite and towards people of color for the current conditions of the white working class.
DiAngelo uses these statistics to prove that white supremacy continues to disadvantage people of color. Not only are the wealthiest Americans all white, but even in comparing groups among the working class, white people still have a distinct advantage over people of color. “Make America Great Again,” President Trump’s slogan, implies a call to return to a more idealized past—but DiAngelo emphasizes that this is only for white people. The fact that the white working class often believes their problems stem from people of color illustrates how white supremacy continues to set narratives that protect the white elite.
Themes
The past also often included segregation in schools and neighborhoods. Many white people fled from cities to suburbs to escape the influx of people of color (termed “white flight”). There was huge resistance to busing children from one neighborhood into a school in another to account for racial segregation. White flight is justified by the belief that people of color (especially Black people) are more prone to crime and that white neighborhoods are safer. This ironically distorts the actual direction of danger that has historically existed between white and Black people.
This passage illustrates how yearning for the past centers white people and is a biased perspective, because the past has always included greater oppression of people of color (harking back to DiAngelo’s list at the beginning of this chapter). Segregation—which still persists to this day, even if it is no longer coded into laws—demonstrates how white people are willing to buy into white supremacy even at the cost of inequality for people of color in schools, for example.
Themes
It has been documented that police stop Black and Latinx people more often than white people for the same activities and judges give people of color harsher sentences. Judges often attribute crime that white youths commit to external factors (e.g., coming from a single-parent home or having a hard time) as opposed to Black and Latinx youth, whose crimes they attribute to internal factors (e.g., they are “naturally more prone to crime” or “more animalistic”).
This is another example of how racism and white supremacy manifest in the present day. The judges use racially coded language like “prone to crime” or “animalistic” that relies on stereotypes and caricatures to justify the sentences they give to people of color. This justification and harsher sentencing then reinforce the negative stereotypes white people have about people of color—because they are convicted for crimes more often—without ever naming race.
Themes
Simply getting white people to admit white privilege is difficult. Many people view privilege as something they passively receive, which obscures the dimensions of racism that are actively maintained. In addition, the expectation that people of color should teach white people about racism is another aspect of white racial innocence, as it assumes that racism has nothing to do with white people, relieving them of any guilt or need to do work.
Again, white people assume themselves to be objective and place themselves on the good side of the good/bad binary definition of racism. But this abdicates them of the responsibility to confront racism. In reality, DiAngelo suggests, racism is a problem that can only be solved by white people—and the first step is to admit their complicity in that system.
Themes
Life in the United States is deeply shaped by racial segregation, and white people are the most likely to choose segregation. Though they don’t see people of color around them, few white adults acknowledge a lack of racial diversity as a problem. Segregation is somewhat lessened for poor white people in urban areas who may live near people of color. But even in this scenario, upward mobility is a great goal in the United States, and the social environment gets whiter the higher a person climbs. DiAngelo grew up poor with many people of color around her, but she knew that to improve her life, she would not remain in those spaces.
Segregation and the desire for social mobility are other aspects of white supremacy. Because the most desirable spaces in society are white spaces, DiAngelo notes, people actively seek them out. This is where white privilege comes in—DiAngelo, for instance, inherently has a greater sense of belonging to those spaces and is more readily accepted into them because she is white.
Themes
Meritocracy is another important ideology in the U.S., but neighborhoods and schools are clearly separate and unequal. Rather than changing conditions so that public education is equal, white people allow other people’s children to endure conditions that would be unacceptable for their own kids. White people seek out schools based on the best test scores, but schools with more nonwhite students receive fewer resources and therefore do not have better test scores, which leads to further racial segregation.
Meritocracy is another Western ideology that obscures white supremacy and systemic racism. While white people can say that they are choosing schools based on test scores, in reality white supremacy has created an unequal system that gives greater resources to schools with white students, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about which schools are the best.
Themes
Perhaps the most profound message of racial segregation is that people of color’s absence from white people’s lives is not a loss. If white people truly believed that there was value in cross-racial relationships for themselves and for their children, they would seek them out.
This is a particularly deep-seated aspect of white supremacy: the current system of segregation inherently rests on the idea that white people feel they don’t need people of color in their lives.
Themes
Summing up her points from the chapter, DiAngelo explains that society creates a common set of racial patterns: preference for racial segregation, failure to understand that white people are part of a group and that they are not objective, unwillingness to listen and learn, the need to maintain white solidarity, and defensiveness about any suggestion that white people are connected to racism. These attitudes shape every aspect of our lives and telling people to treat everyone the same will not override this socialization.
This passage sums up many of the book’s key ideas: ideologies like individualism, objectivity, and meritocracy make it difficult for white people to understand the advantages they possess as a group, which consequently prevents them from dismantling white supremacy. And when those ideologies are challenged and white people are forced to acknowledge their privilege, they often react with white fragility.
Themes
