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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPlease Read: White Fragility: "Why It's So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism"
This is an excellent analysis and explanation. Unfortunately, the people who most need to read it probably won't ...
April 9, 2015 by Dr. Robin DiAngelo
I am white. I have spent years studying what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race. This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sourcesschools, textbooks, mediadont provide us with the multiple perspectives we need.
Yes, we will develop strong emotionally laden opinions, but they will not be informed opinions. Our socialization renders us racially illiterate. When you add a lack of humility to that illiteracy (because we dont know what we dont know), you get the break-down we so often see when trying to engage white people in meaningful conversations about race.
Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to individual racial prejudice and the intentional actions that result. The people that commit these intentional acts are deemed bad, and those that dont are good. If we are against racism and unaware of committing racist acts, we cant be racist; racism and being a good person have become mutually exclusive. But this definition does little to explain how racial hierarchies are consistently reproduced.
Social scientists understand racism as a multidimensional and highly adaptive systema system that ensures an unequal distribution of resources between racial groups. Because whites built and dominate all significant institutions, (often at the expense of and on the uncompensated labor of other groups), their interests are embedded in the foundation of U.S. society.
While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism wont be one of them. This distinctionbetween individual prejudice and a system of unequal institutionalized racial poweris fundamental. One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.
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Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority and entitlement that we are either not consciously aware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We experience a challenge to our racial worldview as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. It also challenges our sense of rightful place in the hierarchy. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as a very unsettling and unfair moral offense.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/?fbclid=IwAR1i5P6KnUueleMKgc6GowjsGzH-8xovhR_uRxDfSyLJshPO-zObcvfRSGQ
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)There are plenty of them out there and putting yourself in someone else's shoes and seeing through their eyes for ten or twelve hours at a time can go a long way towards opening eyes and clearing minds.
intheflow
(28,408 posts)Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race and Ibram Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist are both fantastic.
However, there's also something to be said for white people to own their own shit and hold each other accountable. That's the value of D'Angelo's book.
The bigger problem is that SO MANY white people are so immersed in whiteness that they will only listen to other white people, and then congratulate themselves on being liberal enough to read a nonfiction book written by a woman.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,152 posts)Which is why it's so easy to be "against racism" and see one's self as "not racist," but so very hard to actually dismantle racist systems that benefit white people. Great article.
PunkinPi
(4,870 posts)MicaelS
(8,747 posts)MineralMan
(146,192 posts)who have such privilege. It makes such people very uncomfortable.
That's unfortunate, since opening one's own eyes is the first step toward understanding others.
StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)Even among very progressive people, the reaction is often a kneejerk defensiveness that turns the conversation into an accusation that they're being victimized.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)white people are being criticized it is not personal. I don't take it personally and it upsets me when others do.
I feel the same way with men and sexism. Calling out some men is not calling out all men. If it's not about you, then you should have no reason to feel offended.
I agree with most accusations of racism because I think a person of color knows better than I do when they are being treated as less than by a white person. It is not my call or my decision to make.
It makes me angry when white people accuse people of color of reverse racism simply for calling them out on their own racism. I see this all the time in my local Boston newspaper and it makes me sick. I honestly believe there is no such thing as reverse racism since it is not institutionalized and never hurts white people in any substantial way.