White Fragility

Description

Jonathan Church:

"According to DiAngelo, white people have been “[s]ocialized” to live with “a deeply internalized sense of superiority and entitlement” but they aren’t consciously aware of it. As a result, they experience “race-based stress” when faced with a challenge to their “racial worldview” because they perceive it to be an affront to their “identities as good, moral people”—an “unfair moral offense,” as well as an attack on their “rightful place in the hierarchy.” This makes it hard to talk to white people about how their attitudes and beliefs make them complicit in the perpetuation of “institutional racism.”

In other words, white people don’t want to be called racists. Of course, the idea that white people don’t like to be called racists is not an especially unique or compelling insight. Psychological defense mechanisms are commonplace in human nature. But DiAngelo wants to convince white people to let down their guard by claiming that their sensitivity is produced by a misunderstanding of the nature of racism. Racism, she claims, is not so much about explicit beliefs white people consciously hold about people of color, but about implicit—or unconscious—biases that sustain institutional inequities in the distribution of societal resources across different racial groups." (https://quillette.com/2018/08/24/the-problem-with-white-fragility-theory/)

Discussion

White Fragility Theory is an Ideology

Jonathan Church:

"the theory of white fragility is based on the dubious premise of implicit bias, relies on research methodology that is underwhelming at best and makes claims about white racial illiteracy that avoid statistical analysis. Underlying each of these criticisms is a fundamental conviction that Robin DiAngelo, who introduced the theory of white fragility, does not know as much as she claims to know about white racial literacy, the causes of racial disparities and the nature of racism.

There is a striking contrast between DiAngelo’s presumption of omniscience about racism and the zeal with which she implores white people to show humility when attempting to learn about the problem. In her many years of studying racism, DiAngelo has encountered much resistance from white people, resistance which led her to coin the term white fragility—a condition in which “even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.” DiAngelo presumes to approach the problem of racism from the standpoint of someone who has worked over several years not only to learn about the causes and effects of racism in America, but to build the stamina necessary to come to terms with her own inherent racism as a white person.

DiAngelo posits that white fragility stems from a misunderstanding of what racism is and how it works. Racism, according to DiAngelo, is inextricably tied to the powerful grip that white people have on the levers of institutional control, a grip that will remain ironclad until white people learn to let go of their biases and allow DiAngelo and her ilk to explain to them how everything they say and do is racist—i.e. functions as a scaffold of socialization on which white supremacy survives, against the gravitational pull of social justice activists, who seek to bring about its collapse.

Admittedly, DiAngelo draws upon a vast corpus of Whiteness Studies literature, has many years of experience in antiracist and multicultural education and has several publications to her name. Unfortunately, however, she also avoids debate, is reluctant to consider conflicting evidence and, most importantly, has a propensity to present her claims as doctrines to be instilled, rather than as hypotheses, which can be rigorously evaluated." (https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/25/the-theory-of-white-fragility-scholarship-or-proselytization/)