White Fragility: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Prior to the civil rights movement, it was socially acceptable for white people to openly proclaim their belief in racial superiority. However, because the struggle for civil rights was televised, white people across the nation watched in horror as Black men, women, and children were attacked by police dogs and fire hoses and beaten at lunch counters. Not wanting to be associated with these racist acts of violence, white people became far more reticent to admit to racial prejudice, and being a good, moral person became mutually exclusive with being complicit in racism.

While defining racism as bad was a positive change, this also meant that suggesting white people exhibited racist behavior became a kind of character assassination. As a result, white people put all energy into deflecting the charge of racism rather than reflecting on their behavior. In this way, the “good/bad binary” makes it impossible to talk to white people about racism. It is also a false dichotomy, as all people hold prejudice and all white people are affected by and benefit from racism.

Although individual racist acts occur, the focus on them masks the overarching structure of racism and the need to challenge this larger system. And when white people place themselves on the “not racist” side of the good/bad binary, they do not feel the need to take any further action, because they believe racism is not their responsibility. They will not think critically about racism or use their position to challenge inequality.

When white people’s racism is challenged, white fragility erupts. For example, in a workshop with educators, a white teacher told a story about an interaction she had with a parent in which she learned that she didn’t truly understand the children of color. But she tells it in such a way that she imitates a Black mother in a racist way. As her story comes to close, DiAngelo realizes that she must address the stereotype, even though she risks the woman’s defensiveness and the workshop getting off track.

DiAngelo thanks the woman for sharing her interaction but asks her not to tell the story in the same way again, as it enforces racist stereotypes. The woman reacts defensively, but DiAngelo tries to get her to listen. During a later break, several African American teachers and one white teacher thank DiAngelo for her refreshing example of how to break with white solidarity. But several white teachers also approached DiAngelo to let her know that the woman telling the story was very upset and is leaving the group. Even a white person participating in a class on racism could not handle feedback on how her racism was unintentionally manifesting.

It is common to feel defensive when provided with feedback on one’s racist behavior, as many people believe they are being told they are a bad person. But this defensiveness only protects problematic behavior. In addition, the belief that racism can only manifest as discrete, individual, intentional, and malicious acts makes it unlikely that white people will acknowledge any of their own actions as racism.

Responses to accusations of racism fall into two patterns: the first set claims color-blindness (the person does not see race, so therefore they are free of racism), and the second values diversity (the person knows people of color, so therefore they are free of racism). DiAngelo points out that both kinds of statements try to exempt the person from any responsibility or participation in the problem, and thus they protect the racial status quo.

These claims rest on a framework, like a pier. A pier stretches out over the water, appearing to float on its own, but it is propped up by an underlying structure. The top of the pier signifies the surface aspects of the claims, and these claims are propped up by underlying beliefs. If interacting with people of color is evidence that a person is not racist, by that definition racists can only be people who cannot tolerate interacting with people of color at all. But of course this is not true, as even avowed white nationalists interact with people of color.

While some white people claim to treat everyone the same, DiAngelo knows that this is impossible given white people’s socialization. People of color who hear white people say that they treat everyone the same usually think that the person is unaware of their biases, and people of color then brace themselves for another exchange based in white denial.

Even people who have cross-racial friendships still invoke the good/bad binary, claiming that their friendship puts them on the not-racist side of the binary. But these friendships do not block out the dynamics of racism in the society at large, or in the friendships themselves. Many people of color have told DiAngelo that they initially tried to talk about racism with their white friends, but their friends got defensive or invalidated the person’s experiences and so they stopped sharing these experiences.

DiAngelo offers counternarratives to some of the most popular claims she hears for why a white person isn’t racist. “I was taught to treat everyone the same” implies that the person doesn’t understand that they cannot be free from bias. “I marched in the 60s” implies again that racism can only be conscious intolerance, which is untrue. Some argue that they were the minority at their school and experienced racism themselves—but again, that white person was experiencing prejudice and discrimination, not racism. The society at large is still reinforcing white supremacy, and it is likely that white students at a school where they were minorities were treated better by teachers, and the textbooks and curriculum still reinforced a preference for whiteness.

DiAngelo then addresses those who claim that their parents were not racist and taught them not to be racist. This is not possible, she says, because racism is comprised of systems, not individual acts. Moreover, living a segregated life is a powerful message in and of itself. While some people claim that children today are more open, countless studies have proven this to be false. In one study, white children allocated less money to black children than fellow white children—but only when an adult wasn’t present. Thus, they were not less racially biased, but instead they had simply learned to hide their racism.

The defense of “race has nothing to do with it,” is the same as claiming color-blindness, which DiAngelo has already proven is impossible and does not preclude racism. Claim that focusing on race is what divides people is a particularly pernicious claim because it posits the problem as the naming of inequality, not the inequality itself. But unequal power relations cannot be challenged if they are not acknowledged.

While speaking up against explicitly racist actions is critical, it is important not to use them to construct a false binary. Instead, DiAngelo writes that she thinks of herself as being on a continuum, actively seeking to interrupt racism in every context. While it’s uncomfortable for white people to talk about or admit to their own racism, they have to do so in order to challenge it rather than protect it.