![]() Your learning is not finished, and it’s on you to continually educate yourself. Read books and articles by people of color. “We need to understand all the unconscious bias we bring to the table - the table where decisions are being made for people who are not at that table.”Īsk yourself: What has enabled you NOT to know what to do about racism? The information is all around you. “We need to unpack that it’s not about if I’m nice or good or bad,” said DiAngelo. We may not be fully truthful with ourselves. We have an inclination to object and dismiss our biases, partly because we have never or rarely been challenged before and it is uncomfortable. We must first recognize our biases, then work to address them. We fear accidentally saying or doing something racist, yet bristle when our mistakes are pointed out. This creates a dichotomy for well-intended white progressives. “We make it so miserable for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable and often unaware patterns, that most of the time they don’t.” “I think white fragility functions as a kind of everyday white racial bullying,” said DiAngelo. It works effectively to police people of color into not challenging us. White Fragility functions to block the challenge and regain white racial equilibrium. It becomes a kind of weaponized defensiveness … because it marshals behind it the weight of historical and legal power and control.” But, the impact of that meltdown isn’t fragile at all. “When I coined this phrase,” said DiAngelo, the ‘fragility’ part is meant to capture how little it takes. This inability to tolerate the racial stress of a challenge to our positions or perceptions is what DiAngelo has termed “White Fragility.” If we’re challenged on our racial assumptions, advantages or behaviors, whites often become defensive or hurt. And where you are on the black/white continuum will affect your experience - the darker you are, the more discrimination you will experience.” “In the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other.’ As a group, African-Americans garner the strongest response and the most energy. “All peoples who are not perceived or defined as “white” experience racism in this country, in both shared ways and in unique, specific ways.”ĭiAngelo believes there is something profoundly anti-black in this culture. “To be white is to belong - to have opportunity, advantage and networking,” DiAngelo noted while showing photos of predominantly white social groups from politics and media. It is up to us to determine how it shaped us, not if.” None of us could be exempt from the forces of this system. She encouraged us to examine if this is the trigger for our own defensiveness.ĭiAngelo reviewed the history of systematic racism, beginning with slavery, mandatory segregation and lynchings, and continuing into present-day employment and educational discrimination, mass incarceration, biased media, voter suppression, and unaddressed trauma. “If this is my definition of racism and you say something I’ve said or done is racist,” said DiAngelo, “what I’m going to hear is that you’re questioning my moral character. This implies intent - that you are a “bad” person if you hold a racist view, regardless of whether it is subconscious.ĭiAngelo posits that this definition is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic and serves to protect the system of racism. The common definition of a racist is an individual who consciously does not like people based on race and is intentionally mean to them. It gets embedded in every institution and our cultural definitions. Systemic Racism takes place when we back a group’s collective bias by legal authority and institutional control. When we act on prejudice, we now discriminate. Prejudice is a prejudgment about social others as defined in a given culture.ĭiscrimination is external. DiAngelo led a breakout exercise to define terms we may use interchangeably, but have different meanings:
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