“White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo

So yes like every other white person have been reading this book. And I’m not totally sure what to say other than if you are white you do, in fact, need to read this and you need to hear what Diangelo has to say. I don’t really care whether you think this applies to you or not (actually if you resist I know it does for sure lol) you just need to read it.

There’s a number of other books that I’ve read on race and diversity, but this book articulates a number of concepts really clearly and succinctly. This makes it a pretty quick read, but I constantly was thinking “that’s such an important concept, I need to write it down or start taking notes.” Her discussion about how white supremacy has socialized white people to think that they don’t have race and that racists are fundamentally bad people is particularly excellent. And makes for a very compelling case why we ALL need to constantly work on ourselves.

I really dug the last chapter though. This is when she goes over what we need to do after reading this book. Because that is where the real work begins, you cannot just read something and expect to become a perfect human overnight. Diangelo here tells us to think about what we can do about our own white fragility. Have we bothered educating ourselves on racism? Do we have diverse friends? Do we call out other white people when they do problematic things?

I also really appreciated how she added an anecdote about someone calling her out on a statement that she made and her reaction to the feedback. It not only gives a model for people to receive similar feedback, but demonstrates that even the author of this book has things to work on and strive towards. Becoming aware of the problem is step 1, the next (and hardest, and longest) step is to work on fixing the problem for the rest of our lives.

Being aware of our tendencies when it comes to race is a long and hard road. But it is one that we all must take. This book is a great first step if you need that extra nudge.