White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

White Fragility argues that white people in the United States are unprepared and unwilling to have honest conversations about race. Though this stems from historical and sociopolitical sources, it is important for white people to individually analyze and unlearn their socialization to have authentic conversations about race and racism. Unfortunately, many white people instead engage in a dynamic that DiAngelo calls the “refusal to know” (50): declining to participate in talks about racism because they can feel extremely uncomfortable.

White people resist talking about race and racism in many ways, all of which “maintain unequal racial power” (86). White people display this resistance by denying the existence of racism, denying their participation in the system of racism, remaining silent in conversations, or responding with anger or other strong emotions. These reactions reinforce racism, keep white people from “acknowledging their complicity” (108), and make it difficult for white people to have authentic relationships with people of color. DiAngelo writes, “[M]any people of color have told me that they initially tried to talk about racism with their white friends, but their friends got defensive or invalidated their experiences, so they stopped sharing their experiences” (81).