White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

White Fragility Reviews

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  m8lyn

  DiAngelo presents a lot of ideas that have been previously recorded by Black authors and people of color, and she acknowledges this fact to a certain extent. One of her more interesting aspects on racism and anti-black racism is in her experience working in cultural competence classes. She uses the white people from her previous experiences as examples of white fragility, and I found her overall definition of white fragility— commonly associated as white guilt, white tears, white flight, color blindness, subconscious biases, etc.— informative. Additionally, her book led me to recall conversations I’ve had (or failed to have) with white people about race from her perspective of white fragility. Yeah, although high school history classes weren’t fun to recall, DiAngelo’s book prompted me to recall them again with white fragility in mind. Still, those conversations fall on a spectrum; they are nuanced. Some have gone good, some have gone bad, some never happened at all— I think what bothers me most about DiAngelo’s book is that she insists that all white people are racist, which actually creates more harm towards repairing race relations and actually tackling systemic racism and anti-blackness. Yes, while white people benefit from systemic racism and anti-blackness, not all white people are inherently racist. I think of the late Jane Elliot, for example, as an excellent white advocate. Sorry, DiAngelo, you’re not the next Jane Elliot.
  
  With that said, this book isn’t free of personal criticism. I was uncomfortable with her recounting of her own racist comments/actions, especially what she once (in her admission) said about hair and towards a Hispanic woman (desperate occasions) since I’ve had to deal with comments about that myself. That took some balls for her to admit and publish— it’s better than denial, I guess? She would also say “blacks” dozens of times throughout the book, which is insensitive and outdated. Towards the later half of the book, I recognized that it wasn’t used as frequently, and instead she would use “people of color”, but she also failed to capitalize Black throughout her writing as a whole.
  
  Additionally, during the height of the BLM movement in the summer of 2020, her book outsold Black/POC writings on anti-blackness and systemic racism. Although that was outside of her control, a white author’s take on racism contributed to the white supremacy she herself critiques, and it left Black political thought below her book in sales charts during an important time of Black activism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Ironically, in 2018, DiAngelo points to this fact that most white people looking to educate themselves would rather learn from other white people to protect white fragility. Still, I can’t help but keep that taste of 2020 in my mouth while reading this book.
  
  All in all, while my overview of the book is neither as negative or positive as other reviews I have read, this book is still in the middle for me. I have mixed feelings, but I wouldn’t say that I liked it either. Yeah, there were some points I agreed with, but those were already made before DiAngelo published them. Her argument on her own I wasn’t too sure of. Instead, I would encourage readers to read Black/POC thought above DiAngelo’s work.
  
  This is far as I will go and can go for my opinion, because I cannot speak from the Black perspective. There are reviews online I would instead like to resource below:
  
  
  https://earlybirdbooks.com/white-frag...#
  
  
  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...
  
  
  https://www.thebellows.org/im-black-a...
  
  
  https://medium.com/@annekathrynbailey...