Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility addresses why it is hard for white people to discuss the topic of racism. DiAngelo expresses the need for white people to understand and talk about racism by demonstrating how individuals are significant contributors to maintaining discrimination as the basis of American society. According to the author, the concept of white fragility implies intense feelings, assertions, and defensive opinions that white people face, express, and utilize when experiencing an issue about racism. For instance, fragility manifests when a white individual insists that affirmative action has led to the segregation of white people. DiAngelo also cites examples at the national level, such as the Black Lives Matter, which the whites group into “All Lives Matter” (DiAngelo, 2018). The author discusses how the anti-immigration regulation by President Donald Trump’s administration which outlaws travel from numerous Muslim states, exhibits white fragility. The author, therefore, manages to use these various examples to illustrate the most recent situations and interactions facing many Americans in their daily lives.
The volume traverses the audience through the main elements of white fragility, in which the author gives a historical background of racism dating back to colonialism. She reveals the colonizer’s need to approve the way they handled indigenous people of color with inequality hence leading to discrimination and the notion of white supremacy (DiAngelo, 2018). DiAngelo uses most of her work discussing the colonial past to show the readers the social constructivism of race rather than a biological trait. The writer, as such, debates the core reason of the whites’ challenges in speaking about racism twofold as a bad or good feature.
The meaning of racism has dramatically changed after the dreadful experience of white Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. People started to perceive the issue as evil and malicious people who used violence in the process. The outlook of racism as an evil act indicates why white Americans handle their labeling as racist in a personal context (DiAngelo, 2018). The author asserts that the outlook of racism is the basis of white fragility and the resultant white supremacy and prejudice. The author’s inference is that the white individuals are party to racial bias and shape racism.
I strongly believe that DiAngelo’s suggestion that people need to cease perceiving a person who pronounces the N-word to be a racist is valid and should be encouraged at all costs. His thought-provoking book provides nuanced insights at a time of greatly divided debate about racism. Although discussing race is an ongoing talk, failure to speak about the issue is risky and may further enhance racism. The problem of racism does not exist in the failure to discuss the topic but the differences in the levels of understanding various aspects of racism, such as the meaning and the magnitude of the impacts of the subject.
The writer’s emphasis is the American colonial context during which the white Americans maintained institutional supremacy. It is, therefore, appropriate to develop an understanding of racism in a system’s context rather than a blend. In my view, the Black American people perceive the white Americans’ use of the word “Nigga’ to imply racism. At the same time, they consider it a colloquial term if it comes from other Black Americans. In my opinion, the N-word is a blend and hence harmless only when it exists in a context that cannot incite or trigger damage.
Reference
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.