Book Review: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by Robin DiAngelo
This book is a worthy and indispensable read. It is about and for white people, and how to eliminate our unconscious and ubiquitous racism. Robin DiAngelo addresses white progressives in particular about the pervasive racism we all have because of our common culture, and the mythologies it is predicated on. In this book you will find a refined vocabulary that was not utilized in the race relations sessions of the 1970s, and this further developed semantical approach is like a medical advancement against a deadly disease. Although people of all cultures have their flaws and prejudices, our mainstream (i.e., white) culture has taught us an egregiously false and self serving history, and learning the full history of Western whiteness reveals white privilege to be the deceptive and oppressive aberration that it is. Using science and her own real world observations of human behavior, the author lays bare the tricks and mind games whites use to preserve their shield of willing ignorance of our common hurtful actions toward the “other.” Don’t be put off by the title of this book, as the author demonstrates repeatedly that there is nothing to fear and one’s own humanity to gain in admitting that we operate on the racism that our environment soaks us in. The fig leaf has long dropped off in the sight of non-white people, who already know this only too well (whether or not their white sisters and brothers are aware that they themselves are naked in this way). DiAngelo gives whites permission to expel our embedded racism by acknowledging that good people act on racist assumptions, and that good people upon learning of their racist behavior will work to eliminate it.
—