1:14pm June 5, 2014

➸ White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo

jhameia:

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. This paper explicates the dynamics of White Fragility.

When white people overreact to a simple post describing how history has been whitewashed? White Fragility. When white people overreact to a post that names white folk as oppressors of non-white people? White Fragility. When a simple conversation about race and racism suddenly gets diverted to being about a white person’s feeeeeelings? White Fragility.

It is, in essence, the lack of a psychological stamina to deal with talking about race and racism. Here is an academic study. It lists down and gives clear examples of manifestations of this terrible stamina wrt race conversations. There is a PDF and it is free to download.

My apartment building is very white.  But when one of my (white) neighbor’s mother found out there was one black guy living here, she tried to convince my neighbor to move out, saying it was “unlivable” and other things like that to have an (unprintable word for black person) living here.  Just one black person apparently spoiled the entire 100-resident building for this woman.  I’d call that a frigging ridiculous level of fragility (not to mention flagrant racism).

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