Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 9/8/1956
WEBSITE: https://robindiangelo.com/
CITY:
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 8, 1956.
EDUCATION:University of Washington, Ph.D., 2004.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Consultant and writer. Has taught at Westfield State University, Westfield, MA.
AWARDS:Two-time recipient of Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year, University of Washington’s School of Social Work.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Uncommon Bonds: Women Reflect on Making and Maintaining Interracial Friendships and Interrogating Whiteness and Relinquishing Power: White Faculty’s Commitment to Racial Consciousness in STEM Classrooms. Contributor to journals, including Journal of Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, Journal of Educational Foundations, and Race & Ethnicity in Education.
SIDELIGHTS
Robin DiAngelo is a writer and consultant on the the topic of race, specifically whiteness and how white people interact with people of color. “I grew up poor and white,” she states on her home page. “While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism.” In her writing and her work as a trainer, she seeks to make other white people aware of this collusion and show them how to counter it. She often meets with resistance, she told Sam Adler in an online interview at Racism Review. “I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country,” she said. “That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.” She further explained: “If you call someone out [on racism], they think to themselves, ‘What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.’ It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people.” White people should recognize that “we are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior,: she said. Whites also need to learn to stop policing how people of color respond to racism, she said. “One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback,” she told Adler. “We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.”
Is Everyone Really Equal?
In Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, DiAngelo and coauthor Ozlem Sensoy advise aspiring educators on how to address social justice issues, including racism, in their classrooms. They discuss how systems of oppression function, drawing on both scholarship and examples from experience. They note that teachers will encounter students who have misconceptions about racism and are resistant to examining it in themselves or others, and they provide guidelines on how to guide these students into constructive conversations. The authors also deal with problematic language about race and other characteristics. They emphasize that while educators need to be aware of how social hierarchies affect certain groups of people, they must not consider membership in any group to be the whole of a person’s identity.
Some critics thought DiAngelo and Sensoy offered much valuable information. “Layered with questions and examples, the authors approach the material in a teacherly way, exploring the concepts by nuancing theory with relevant examples.” observed In Education contributor Michael Cappello. He continued: “The authors pose questions, highlighting moments where a perspective check might be needed, where the ideas on offer just might require a change in thinking from dominant ideas. Students reading this book are challenged and supported in challenging their own perspectives.” In the Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Anne Hales commented that Is Everyone Really Equal? “serves as a solid primary course textbook for postsecondary and secondary educators who are committed to activating social justice pedagogy within their practices.” On the Wabash Center’s website, Frederick Ware remarked that the book “merits consideration by all readers interested in social justice education in pluralistic society.” Cappello termed it “a must-read for anyone interested in or teaching about social justice education or anti-oppressive education.”
White Fragility
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism addresses white readers on the topic of “white fragility,” which DiAngelo defines as the tendency of white people to become offended or defensive when confronted about complicity in racism. She explains that even the most well-intentioned whites can “participate in racism,” as it is “deeply embedded in the fabric of our society.” She urges readers to recognize this fact and to be willing to examine their behavior and that of other whites, noting that white liberals–a group she counts herself among–are often in the most deep denial about their problematic actions. She offers guidance for combating white fragility and overcoming racism.
Several reviewers considered this an important work. “The value in ‘White Fragility’ lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance,” related Katy Waldman in the New Yorker. She added: “DiAngelo, for all the outrageousness she documents, never comes across as anything other than preternaturally calm, patient, and lucid, issuing prescriptions for a better world as if from beneath a blanket of Ativan. Her almost motorized equipoise clarifies the book’s stakes: she cannot afford to lose us, who are so easily lost.” The author, noted a Publishers Weekly contributor, “provides a powerful lens for examining, and practical tools for grappling with, racism today.” In Pacific Standard, Peter C. Baker concluded: “It is easy to overstate the value of ‘conversations about race’ and, in the process, de-emphasize the need for material change. But it is hard to deny that a great many new conversations are likely needed, particularly within white families and social circles. The number of conversations coaxed into existence by DiAngelo’s work will be a central measure of its success. I hope it is a great one.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, summer, 2016, Anne Hales, review of Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education.
In Education, volume 19, number 3, 2014, Michael Cappello, review of Is Everyone Really Equal?
New Yorker, July 23, 2018, Katy Waldman, “A Sociologist Examines the ‘White Fragility’ That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism.”
Pacific Standard, (June-July, 2018), Peter C. Baker, “A Cure for White Fragility.”
Publishers Weekly, April 23, 2018, review of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, p. 78.
Reference & Research Book News, August, 2012, review of What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy.
Seattle Times, June 26, 2018, Nicole Brodeur, “Why White People Should See Color, and More from the Author of ‘White Fragility.'”
ONLINE
National Review website, https://www.nationalreview.com/ (July 24, 2018), Rich Lowry, “Are Individualism, Objectivity, and Opposition to Racism Racist?”
Racism Review, http://www.racismreview.com/ (March 16, 2015), Sam Adler-Bell, interview with Robin DiAngelo.
Robin DiAngelo website, https://robindiangelo.com (August 30, 2018).
Wabash Center website, https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/ (August 30, 2018), Frederick Ware, review of Is Everyone Really Equal?
Quoted in Sidelights: “I grew up poor and white,” she states on her home page. “While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism.”
About Me
Academic: I received my PhD in Multicultural Education from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2004. Dr. James Banks was my dissertation Chair. I earned tenure at Westfield State University and I have taught courses in Multicultural Teaching, Inter-group Dialogue Facilitation, Cultural Diversity & Social Justice, and Anti-Racist Education. My area of research is in Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, explicating how Whiteness is reproduced in everyday narratives. I am a two-time winner of the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. I resigned my position at Westfield State in 2015 and I am currently writing and presenting full-time. My work on White Fragility has been featured or cited in Salon, NPR, Slate, Alternet, the Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Seattle Times. It will be released as a book from Beacon Press in Summer of 2018.
Professional: I have been a consultant and trainer for over 20 years on issues of racial and social justice. I was appointed to co-design the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative Anti-Racism training (with Darlene Flynn). I have worked with a wide-range of organizations including private, non-profit, and governmental.
Personal: “I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism. In so doing, I have been able to address in greater depth my multiple locations and how they function together to hold racism in place. I now make the distinction that I grew up poor and white, for my experience of poverty would have been different had I not been white” (DiAngelo, 2006).
Quotedin Sidelights: “I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country,,” she said. “That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.” She further explained: “If you call someone out [on racism], they think to themselves, ‘What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.’ It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people.” White people should recognize that “we are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior,: she said. Whites also need to learn to stop policing how people of color respond to racism, she said. “One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback,” she told Adler. “We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.”
Research Brief: An Interview with Robin DiAngelo about ‘White Fragility’
March 16, 2015 • admin • racism
For this week’s research brief, we’re highlighting the work of Robin DiAngelo. She was recently interviewed by Sam Adler-Bell, a journalist and policy associate at the Century Foundation, a NY-based think tank.
Research in the Dictionary
Last year, a white male Princeton undergraduate was asked by a classmate to “check his privilege.” Offended by this suggestion, he shot off a 1,300-word essay to the Tory, a right-wing campus newspaper.In it, he wrote about his grandfather who fled the Nazis to Siberia, his grandmother who survived a concentration camp in Germany, about the humble wicker basket business they started in America. He railed against his classmates for “diminishing everything [he’d] accomplished, all the hard work [he’d] done.”
His missive was reprinted by Time. He was interviewed by the New York Times and appeared on Fox News. He became a darling of white conservatives across the country.
What he did not do, at any point, was consider whether being white and male might have given him—if not his ancestors—some advantage in achieving incredible success in America. He did not, in other words, check his privilege.
To Robin DiAngelo, professor of multicutural education at Westfield State University and author of What Does it Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy, Tal Fortgang’s essay —indignant, defensive, beside-the-point, somehow both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing—followed a familiar script. As an anti-racist educator for more than two decades, DiAngelo has heard versions of it recited hundreds of times by white men and women in her workshops.
She’s heard it so many times, in fact, that she came up with a term for it: “white fragility,” which she defined in a 2011 journal article as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include outward display of emotions such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence and leaving the stress-inducing situation.”
When the Black Lives Matter movement marched in the streets, holding up traffic, disrupting commerce, and refusing to allow “normal life” to resume—insofar as normalcy means a system that permits police and vigilantes to murder black men and women with impunity—white people found themselves in tense conversations online, with friends and in the media about privilege, white supremacy and racism. You could say white fragility was at an all-time high.
I spoke with DiAngelo about how to deal with all the fragile white people, and why it’s worth doing so.
Sam Adler-Bell: How did you come to write about “white fragility”?
Robin DiAngelo: To be honest, I wanted to take it on because it’s a frustrating dynamic that I encounter a lot. I don’t have a lot of patience for it. And I wanted to put a mirror to it.
I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.
Of course, it functions as means of resistance, but I think it’s also useful to think about it as fragility, as inability to handle the stress of conversations about race and racism
Sometimes it’s strategic, a very intentional push back and rebuttal. But a lot of the time, the person simply cannot function. They regress into an emotional state that prevents anybody from moving forward.
SAB: Carla Murphy recently referenced “white fragility” in an article for Colorlines, and I’ve seen it referenced on Twitter and Facebook a lot lately. It seems like it’s having a moment. Why do you think that is?
RD: I think we get tired of certain terms. What I do used to be called “diversity training,” then “cultural competency” and now, “anti-racism.” These terms are really useful for periods of time, but then they get coopted, and people build all this baggage around them, and you have to come up with new terms or else people won’t engage.
And I think “white privilege” has reached that point. It rocked my world when I first really got it, when I came across Peggy McIntosh. It’s a really powerful start for people. But unfortunately it’s been played so much now that it turns people off.
SAB: What causes white fragility to set in?
RD: For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we’re good, moral people we can’t be racist – we don’t engage in those acts. This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time—that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not “doing.”
In large part, white fragility—the defensiveness, the fear of conflict—is rooted in this good/bad binary. If you call someone out, they think to themselves, “What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.” It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people.
The good/bad binary is also what leads to the very unhelpful phenomenon of un-friending on Facebook.
SAB: Right, because the instinct is to un-friend, to dissociate from those bad white people, so that I’m not implicated in their badness.
RD: When I’m doing a workshop with white people, I’ll often say, “If we don’t work with each other, if we give in to that pull to separate, who have we left to deal with the white person that we’ve given up on and won’t address?
SAB: A person of color.
RD: Exactly. And white fragility also comes from a deep sense of entitlement. Think about it like this: from the time I opened my eyes, I have been told that as a white person, I am superior to people of color. There’s never been a space in which I have not been receiving that message. From what hospital I was allowed to be born in, to how my mother was treated by the staff, to who owned the hospital, to who cleaned the rooms and took out the garbage. We are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior.
And, the thing is, it feels good. Even though it contradicts our most basic principles and values. So we know it, but we can never admit it. It creates this kind of dangerous internal stew that gets enacted externally in our interactions with people of color, and is crazy-making for people of color. We have set the world up to preserve that internal sense of superiority and also resist challenges to it. All while denying that anything is going on and insisting that race is meaningless to us.
SAB: Something that amazes me is the sophistication of some white people’s defensive maneuvers. I have a black friend who was accused of “online harassment” by a white friend after he called her out in a harsh way. What do you see going on there?
RD: First of all, whites often confuse comfort with safety. We say we don’t feel safe, when what we mean is that we don’t feel comfortable. Secondly, no white person looks at a person of color through objective eyes. There’s been a lot of research in this area. Cross-racially, we do not see with objective eyes. Now you add that he’s a black man. It’s not a fluke that she picked the word “harassed.” In doing that, she’s reinforcing a really classic, racist paradigm: White women and black men. White women’s frailty and black men’s aggressiveness and danger.
But even if she is feeling that, which she very well may be, we should be suspicious of our feelings in these interactions. There’s no such thing as pure feeling. You have a feeling because you’ve filtered the experience through a particular lens. The feeling is the outcome. It probably feels natural, but of course it’s shaped by what you believe.
SAB: There’s also the issue of “tone-policing” here, right?
RD: Yes. One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.
In my workshops, one of the things I like to ask white people is, “What are the rules for how people of color should give us feedback about our racism? What are the rules, where did you get them, and whom do they serve?” Usually those questions alone make the point.
It’s like if you’re standing on my head and I say, “Get off my head,” and you respond, “Well, you need to tell me nicely.” I’d be like, “No. Fuck you. Get off my fucking head.”
In the course of my work, I’ve had many people of color give me feedback in ways that might be perceived as intense or emotional or angry. And on one level, it’s personal—I did do that thing that triggered the response, but at the same time it isn’t onlypersonal. I represent a lifetime of people that have hurt them in the same way that I just did.
And, honestly, the fact that they are willing to show me demonstrates, on some level, that they trust me.
SAB: What do you mean?
RD: If people of color went around showing the pain they feel in every moment that they feel it, they could be killed. It is dangerous. They cannot always share their outrage about the injustice of racism. White people can’t tolerate it. And we punish it severely—from job loss, to violence, to murder.
For them to take that risk and show us, that is a moment of trust. I say, bring it on, thank you.
When I’m doing a workshop, I’ll often ask the people of color in the room, somewhat facetiously, “How often have you given white people feedback about our inevitable and often unconscious racist patterns and had that go well for you?” And they laugh.
Because it just doesn’t go well. And so one time I asked, “What would your daily life be like if you could just simply give us feedback, have us receive it graciously, reflect on it and work to change the behavior? What would your life be like?”
And this one man of color looked at me and said, “It would be revolutionary.”
SAB: I notice as we’ve been talking that you almost always use the word “we” when describing white people’s tendencies. Can you tell me why you do that?
RD: Well, for one, I’m white (and you’re white). And even as committed as I am, I’m not outside of anything that I’m talking about here. If I went around saying white people this and white people that, it would be a distancing move. I don’t want to reinforce the idea that there are some whites who are done, and others that still need work. There’s no being finished.
Plus, in my work, I’m usually addressing white audiences, and the “we” diminishes defensiveness somewhat. It makes them more comfortable. They see that I’m not just pointing fingers outward.
SAB: Do you ever worry about re-centering whiteness?
RD: Well, yes. I continually struggle with that reality. By standing up there as an authority on whiteness, I’m necessarily reinforcing my authority as a white person. It goes with the territory. For example, you’re interviewing me now, on whiteness, and people of color have been saying these things for a very long time.
On the one hand, I know that in many ways, white people can hear me in a way that they can’t hear people of color. They listen. So by god, I’m going to use my voice to challenge racism. The only alternative I can see is to not speak up and challenge racism. And that is not acceptable to me.
It’s sort of a master’s tools dilemma.
SAB: Yes, and racism is something that everyone thinks they’re an authority on.
RD: That drives me crazy. I’ll run into someone I haven’t seen in 20 years in the grocery store, and they’ll say, “Hi! What’ve you been doing?”
And I say, “I got my Ph.D.”
And they say, “Oh wow, what in?”
“Race relations and white racial identity.”
And they’ll go “Oh, well you know. People just need to—”
As if they’re going to give me the one-sentence answer to arguably the most challenging social dynamic of our time. Like, hey, why did I knock myself out for 20 years studying, researching, and challenging this within myself and others? I should have just come to you! And the answer is so simple! I’ve never heard that one before!
Imagine if I was an astronomer. Everybody has a basic understanding of the sky, but they would not debate an astronomer on astronomy. The arrogance of white people faced with questions of race is unbelievable.
~ Sam Adler-Bell is a journalist and policy associate at the Century Foundation, a NY-based think tank. Follow him on Twitter: @SamAdlerBell. This interview was originally published March 12, 2015 on Alternet.
What does it mean to be white?; developing white racial literacy
Reference & Research Book News. 27.4 (Aug. 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781433111150
What does it mean to be white?; developing white racial literacy.
DiAngelo, Robin.
Peter Lang Publishing Inc
2012
318 pages
$39.95
Counterpoints: studies in the postmodern theory of education; v.398
HT1575
Prompted in part by her experience as a counselor in racial diversity training sessions, where she found most of her fellow white people to be racially illiterate, DiAngelo (education, Westfield State U.) here seeks to show how the social construct of race operates in the United States between whites and people of color and how whiteness shapes the racial identities and perspectives of white people. She begins with a discussion of the importance of the issue in education. She then proceeds to discuss the ways in which socialization shapes the identities and perspectives of all people, the elements of societal oppression, the historical development of race as a social construct, the conceptualization of racism as an embedded system of unequal power in which all are complicit regardless of intentions, contemporary manifestations of "new" racism, the ways in which race shapes the lives of white people, ways in which racism is obscured for and denied by whites, issues of intersecting identities (such as race and class), and the ways in which racism manifests for different racial groups. She concludes with a discussion of the basic tenets of antiracist education.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What does it mean to be white?; developing white racial literacy." Reference & Research Book News, Aug. 2012. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A298704544/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=56cc45f0. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A298704544
Quoted in Sidelights: “provides a powerful lens for examining, and practical tools for grappling with, racism today.”
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Publishers Weekly. 265.17 (Apr. 23, 2018): p78.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin Diangelo. Beacon, $16 (184p) ISBN 978-0-8070-4741-5
Diangelo (What Does It Mean to Be White?), a race scholar and professional diversity trainer, delivers a thoughtful, instructive, and comprehensive book on challenging racism by understanding and working against what she terms "white fragility," the reaction in which white people feel offended or attacked when the topic of racism arises. She explains that the book is primarily intended for white audiences to aid in "building our stamina" for tolerating these discussions in order to challenge racism. Diangelo brings together personal experiences, extensive research, and real-world examples--including missteps she herself has made, such as joking inappropriately about a black colleague's hair--to demonstrate how entrenched racism remains a societal norm in institutions and white people's mindsets, including supposedly "colorblind" thinking and behavior. Her analysis effectively challenges the widespread notion that "only intentionally mean people can participate in racism"; rather, she explains, racism is "deeply embedded in the fabric of our society." She ends with a step-by-step blueprint for confronting and dismantling one's own white fragility to try to "interrupt" racism. This slim book is impressive in its scope and complexity; Diangelo provides a powerful lens for examining, and practical tools for grappling with, racism today. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 78. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532938/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=72930868. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532938
Quoted in Sidelights: “It is easy to overstate the value of ‘conversations about race’ and, in the process, de-emphasize the need for material change. But it is hard to deny that a great many new conversations are likely needed, particularly within white families and social circles. The number of conversations coaxed into existence by DiAngelo’s work will be a central measure of its success. I hope it is a great one.”
A CURE FOR WHITE FRAGILITY
A new book argues that we can't overcome racism unless white people are willing to be a little uncomfortable.
PETER C. BAKERJUN 19, 2018
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
(Photo: Beacon Press)
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo
Beacon Press
In the preface to her slim and penetrating new book, White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo makes a statement that feels more provocative than it should: "I am white and addressing a common white dynamic. I am mainly writing to a white audience; when I use the terms us and we I am referring to the white collective."
These days, explicit self-identification with the "white collective" brings to mind the manifestos and Twitter rants of the loud, proud racists energized by Donald Trump's presidency. But DiAngelo is no Breitbart blogger or alt-right YouTube star, beckoning her white audience with news of their unjust marginalization. She is a scholar of race and education, and a longtime provider of workplace training on racial equality. Her message to her fellow white Americans (like me) is simple: You're too sensitive, and it's an obstacle to progress.
DiAngelo introduced the phrase white fragility—"a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves"—in an academic paper published in 2011. She was describing the reactions of many white people whose workplaces send them to her trainings. They show up defensive and stay defensive, pushing back against every exercise or idea. They don't deny racism exists, or even that it has horrible effects. But they refuse to concede that racism might have anything meaningful to do with their individual lives: their jobs, their families, their thoughts and feelings.
Most Americans will find DiAngelo's catalog of these evasive moves familiar; wearingly so for people of color, embarrassingly so for whites. Even for readers relatively wise to the ways of white defensiveness, it is usefully bracing to see so many maneuvers standing in a line-up together. A partial selection: I was taught to treat everyone the same. I don't see color. I went to a very diverse school. I marched in the '60s. If people are respectful to me, I am respectful of them, regardless of race. I grew up poor (so I don't have race privilege).
The problem isn't that each of these statements is necessarily false (though of course some cannot be true). The problem is that they reduce racism from a matter of structures, groups, and cultures—things that affect and ensnare us all—to a matter entirely of individuals and their self-proclaimed intentions. They are all, implicitly, ways of saying, "Leave me out; here is an issue on which I cannot be confronted." This posture shuts down honest talk about racism, making it less likely that people of color will share their perspectives, let alone have them understood by whites.
DiAngelo shares stories from her trainings about white participants who are challenged for their evasiveness, perhaps by co-workers who are not white. No matter how calm or polite the challenge, people claim they are being attacked, or treated "as white" instead of as the unique individual they know they are. They pout, tune out, nitpick, or blurt awkward jokes. One white woman, challenged to reconsider something she has said, flees the room; later, her friends insist to DiAngelo that, for this woman, the experience almost triggered a literal heart attack.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July 2018 issue of Pacific Standard. Subscribe now and get eight issues/year or purchase a single copy of the magazine.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July 2018 issue of Pacific Standard. Subscribe now and get eight issues/year or purchase a single copy of the magazine.
(Photo: The Voorhes)
The advice in White Fragility is fairly straightforward—which is not, of course, the same thing as easy to act on. DiAngelo wants white people to abandon ideas of racism as a matter of individuals being good or bad, moral or immoral. To accept that we surely have unconscious investments in whiteness—investments we might not yet fully understand. To seek out the perspectives of people of color, embrace the discomfort that might result, and avoid confusing that discomfort with literal danger. To start uncomfortable conversations with family and friends. To breathe slowly. And, perhaps most important, to remember that we should do all this not for people of color, but instead for ourselves, in the spirit of honesty and truth-telling. If white people truly did what it took to shed their fragility, DiAngelo argues—perhaps skipping a few steps—"not only would our interpersonal relationships change, but so would our institutions ... because we would see to it that they did."
One major obstacle, of course, is that people don't like feeling uncomfortable. Many times in my own life, I have decided not to object to racist rhetoric in the interest of maintaining social equilibrium—of "not making a scene." (I've also used racist rhetoric myself: In 2001, I entered an op-ed contest for high school journalists with a piece about how the race of our politicians and journalists doesn't matter because all humans should be capable of using basic empathy to understand each other's perspectives and needs, no matter their skin color. I won second place.) And as a white writer, one who in recent years has been writing more about race and racial violence in America, I know the allure of isolating my engagement with these subjects to the page—where I can, in the comfort of solitude, spend my days refining my thinking and phrasing, all the while spending my nights and weekends with my overwhelmingly white friends and family, rarely discussing race or racism.
One pessimistic possibility, it occurs to me, is that as the term white fragility continues circulating outside of academia, it could end up being deployed by whites looking to deny their own connections to racism and absolve themselves of the need to do any hard work. The term has gone viral of late; last year, it was a runner-up in the Oxford Dictionaries word-of-the-year ranking. This newfound popularity has everything to do with our attempts at understanding Trump's electoral victory. My fear is that DiAngelo's term can all too easily be absorbed into attempts by liberal whites to paint Trump voters as categorically different people: members of another species, with whom they cannot possibly share any complicity or biases.
Last August, a Vox headline proclaimed that "The Charlottesville Protests Are White Fragility in Action." It was likely true—but the more white fragility is deployed to describe only its most extreme manifestations, the less it will spur broad white introspection, let alone the meaningful pursuit of change.
It is easy to overstate the value of "conversations about race" and, in the process, de-emphasize the need for material change. But it is hard to deny that a great many new conversations are likely needed, particularly within white families and social circles. The number of conversations coaxed into existence by DiAngelo's work will be a central measure of its success. I hope it is a great one.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July 2018 issue of Pacific Standard. Subscribe now and get eight issues/year or purchase a single copy of the magazine.
Quoted in Sidelights: “The value in ‘White Fragility’ lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance,” related Katy Waldman in the New Yorker. She added: “DiAngelo, for all the outrageousness she documents, never comes across as anything other than preternaturally calm, patient, and lucid, issuing prescriptions for a better world as if from beneath a blanket of Ativan. Her almost motorized equipoise clarifies the book’s stakes: she cannot afford to lose us, who are so easily lost.”
A Sociologist Examines the “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism
By Katy WaldmanJuly 23, 2018
Much of Robin DiAngelo’s book is dedicated to pulling back the veil on so-called pillars of whiteness: assumptions that prop up racist beliefs without white people realizing it.Photograph by Christopher Anderson / Magnum
In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more “salient” issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?
In a new book, “White Fragility,” DiAngelo attempts to explicate the phenomenon of white people’s paper-thin skin. She argues that our largely segregated society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress—such as, for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (more than unused to it—racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial triggers”—the show “Dear White People,” the term “wypipo”—with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt,” DiAngelo writes, “and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”
DiAngelo, who is white, emphasizes that the stances that make up white fragility are not merely irrational. (Or even comical, though some of her anecdotes—participants in a voluntary anti-racism workshop dissolving with umbrage at any talk of racism—simmer with perverse humor. “I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all,” she remarks wryly.) These splutterings “work,” DiAngelo explains, “to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy.” She finds that the social costs for a black person in awakening the sleeping dragon of white fragility often prove so high that many black people don’t risk pointing out discrimination when they see it. And the expectation of “white solidarity”—white people will forbear from correcting each other’s racial missteps, to preserve the peace—makes genuine allyship elusive. White fragility holds racism in place.
DiAngelo addresses her book mostly to white people, and she reserves her harshest criticism for white liberals like herself (and like me), whom she sees as refusing to acknowledge their own participation in racist systems. “I believe,” she writes, “that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.” Not only do these people fail to see their complicity, but they take a self-serving approach to ongoing anti-racism efforts: “To the degree that white progressives think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived.” Even the racial beliefs and responses that feel authentic or well-intentioned have likely been programmed by white supremacy, to perpetuate white supremacy. Whites profit off of an American political and economic system that showers advantages on racial “winners” and oppresses racial “losers.” Yet, DiAngelo writes, white people cling to the notion of racial innocence, a form of weaponized denial that positions black people as the “havers” of race and the guardians of racial knowledge. Whiteness, on the other hand, scans as invisible, default, a form of racelessness. “Color blindness,” the argument that race shouldn’t matter, prevents us from grappling with how it does.
Much of “White Fragility” is dedicated to pulling back the veil on these so-called pillars of whiteness: assumptions that prop up racist beliefs without our realizing it. Such ideologies include individualism, or the distinctly white-American dream that one writes one’s own destiny, and objectivity, the confidence that one can free oneself entirely from bias. As a sociologist trained in mapping group patterns, DiAngelo can’t help but regard both precepts as naïve (at best) and arrogant (at worst). To be perceived as an individual, to not be associated with anything negative because of your skin color, she notes, is a privilege largely afforded to white people; although most school shooters, domestic terrorists, and rapists in the United States are white, it is rare to see a white man on the street reduced to a stereotype. Likewise, people of color often endure having their views attributed to their racial identities; the luxury of impartiality is denied them. (In outlining these discrepancies, DiAngelo draws heavily on the words of black writers and scholars—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, Ijeoma Oluo, Cheryl Harris—although, perhaps surprisingly, she incorporates few present-day interviews with people of color.)
In DiAngelo’s almost epidemiological vision of white racism, our minds and bodies play host to a pathogen that seeks to replicate itself, sickening us in the process. Like a mutating virus, racism shape-shifts in order to stay alive; when its explicit expression becomes taboo, it hides in coded language. Nor does prejudice disappear when people decide that they will no longer tolerate it. It just looks for ways to avoid detection. “The most effective adaptation of racism over time,” DiAngelo claims, “is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.” This “good/bad binary,” positing a world of evil racists and compassionate non-racists, is itself a racist construct, eliding systemic injustice and imbuing racism with such shattering moral meaning that white people, especially progressives, cannot bear to face their collusion in it. (Pause on that, white reader. You may have subconsciously developed your strong negative feelings about racism in order to escape having to help dismantle it.) As an ethical thinker, DiAngelo belongs to the utilitarian school, which places less importance on attitudes than on the ways in which attitudes cause harm. Unpacking the fantasy of black men as dangerous and violent, she does not simply fact-check it; she shows the myth’s usefulness to white people—to obscure the historical brutality against African-Americans, and to justify continued abuse.
DiAngelo sometimes adopts a soothing, conciliatory tone toward white readers, as if she were appeasing a child on the verge of a tantrum. “If your definition of a racist is someone who holds conscious dislike of people because of race, then I agree that it is offensive for me to suggest that you are racist when I don’t know you,” she writes. “I also agree that if this is your definition of racism, and you are against racism, then you are not racist. Now breathe. I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument, it should soon begin to make sense.” One has the grim hunch that such an approach has been honed over years of placating red-faced white people, workshop participants leaping at any excuse to discount their instructor. DiAngelo, for all the outrageousness she documents, never comes across as anything other than preternaturally calm, patient, and lucid, issuing prescriptions for a better world as if from beneath a blanket of Ativan. Her almost motorized equipoise clarifies the book’s stakes: she cannot afford to lose us, who are so easily lost.
Self-righteousness becomes a seductive complement to “White Fragility,” as gin is to a mystery novel. (“I would never,” I thought, when DiAngelo described the conversation in which her friend dismissed a predominantly black neighborhood as “bad,” unsafe.) Yet the point of the book is that each white person believes herself the exception, one of very few souls magically exempt from a lifetime of racist conditioning. DiAngelo sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country’s legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
Lies and Truth in the Era of Trump
The book is more diagnostic than solutions-oriented, and the guidelines it offers toward the end—listen, don’t center yourself, get educated, think about your responses and what role they play—won’t shock any nervous systems. The value in “White Fragility” lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance. Combatting one’s inner voices of racial prejudice, sneaky and, at times, irresistibly persuasive, is a life’s work. For all the paranoid American theories of being “red-pilled,” of awakening into a many-tentacled liberal/feminist/Jewish conspiracy, the most corrosive force, the ectoplasm infusing itself invisibly through media and culture and politics, is white supremacy.
That’s from a white progressive perspective, of course. The conspiracy of racism is hardly invisible to people of color, many of whom, I suspect, could have written this book in their sleep.
Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Are Individualism, Objectivity, and Opposition to Racism Racist?
By RICH LOWRY
July 24, 2018 1:26 PM
Apparently so, according to the author of the new book White Fragility, who has spent years accusing white people of racism in diversity workshops and found that they react badly to the charge.
Here is an excerpt from the review of the book in The New Yorker:
Much of “White Fragility” is dedicated to pulling back the veil on these so-called pillars of whiteness: assumptions that prop up racist beliefs without our realizing it. Such ideologies include individualism, or the distinctly white-American dream that one writes one’s own destiny, and objectivity, the confidence that one can free oneself entirely from bias. As a sociologist trained in mapping group patterns, [author Robin] DiAngelo can’t help but regard both precepts as naïve (at best) and arrogant (at worst). To be perceived as an individual, to not be associated with anything negative because of your skin color, she notes, is a privilege largely afforded to white people; although most school shooters, domestic terrorists, and rapists in the United States are white, it is rare to see a white man on the street reduced to a stereotype. Likewise, people of color often endure having their views attributed to their racial identities; the luxury of impartiality is denied them. (In outlining these discrepancies, DiAngelo draws heavily on the words of black writers and scholars — Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, Ijeoma Oluo, Cheryl Harris — although, perhaps surprisingly, she incorporates few present-day interviews with people of color.)
In DiAngelo’s almost epidemiological vision of white racism, our minds and bodies play host to a pathogen that seeks to replicate itself, sickening us in the process. Like a mutating virus, racism shape-shifts in order to stay alive; when its explicit expression becomes taboo, it hides in coded language. Nor does prejudice disappear when people decide that they will no longer tolerate it. It just looks for ways to avoid detection. “The most effective adaptation of racism over time,” DiAngelo claims, “is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.” This “good/bad binary,” positing a world of evil racists and compassionate non-racists, is itself a racist construct, eliding systemic injustice and imbuing racism with such shattering moral meaning that white people, especially progressives, cannot bear to face their collusion in it. (Pause on that, white reader. You may have subconsciously developed your strong negative feelings about racism in order to escape having to help dismantle it.)
Why white people should see color, and more from the
author of ‘White Fragility’
Originally published June 26, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated June 26, 2018 at 7:13 am
Robin DiAngelo has just published her third book, “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About
Racism.” (Johnny Andrews / The Seattle Times, 2016)
Lifestyle
Search
8/13/2018 Why white people should see color, and more from the author of ‘White Fragility’ | The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/why-white-people-should-see-color-and-more-from-the-author-of-white-fragility/ 2/7
By Nicole Brodeur
Seattle Times columnist
You’re white. You’re educated and open-minded. You’re a good person! And you’re
anything but a racist. Right?
You don’t care if someone is pink, purple or polka-dotted. In fact, you were raised to not
even see color.
And you need to stop, Robin DiAngelo says. Stop saying things like that, for they are
completely insulting. Human beings aren’t purple or polka-dotted, and we should see
color.
Doing so is one of the first steps white people can take toward improving race relations,
according to DiAngelo, a white, Seattle-based speaker and trainer who focuses on racial
justice, and whose third book, “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to
Talk About Racism,” is released today. (She will speak about her book on Saturday, June
30, at Urban Grace Church in Tacoma.)
Under Our Skin
What does 'white fragility' mean to you?
For more, visit the Under Our Skin project.
8/13/2018 Why white people should see color, and more from the author of ‘White Fragility’ | The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/why-white-people-should-see-color-and-more-from-the-author-of-white-fragility/ 3/7
I sought DiAngelo out — and read her new book — because I have had my own struggles
with racism.
A year ago, I wrote a column about Columbia City that implied the historically black
community only hit the map when a Pagliacci Pizza and Rudy’s Barber Shop moved in. I
apologized, and have made it my mission to understand that whiteness is something I
wear every day. It influences how I interact with the world.
I learned from DiAngelo’s book that my biases began when I was born white. From
there, I was raised with a privilege that I never earned, but that came from biological
fate, and generations of oppression and segregation — some forced, and some inherent.
It is my responsibility to deconstruct those biases.
I don’t even think about my race, DiAngelo said, while people of color are reminded of it
every day, be it with slights, discrimination or abuse. They pay for it with stress, health
problems and even early death. (The death rate for African Americans was generally
higher than whites for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma and diabetes, according to
the Centers for Disease Control.) All this while being asked to explain to white people
what they can do to make things better.
And if they try to explain, well, most times well-meaning white people challenge them
with talk of polka dots. They get defensive, angry, afraid or go silent — reinforcing the
“white equilibrium,” which gets us nowhere.
That’s white fragility.
“Most white people cannot answer the question, ‘What does it mean to be white?’ with
any depth or complexity,” DiAngelo told me. “(White people) are not raised to see
ourselves in racial terms, and bring that inability to answer that question to the table
with us.
“And people of color know
8/13/2018 Why white people should see color, and more from the author of ‘White Fragility’ | The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/why-white-people-should-see-color-and-more-from-the-author-of-white-fragility/ 4/7
made a racist comment, when the comment itself should do that on its own? And are
you aware of the ways in which your whiteness has made your life so easy that the color
of your skin barely crosses your mind?
To help me understand how white people sometimes ask people of color to explain their
experience, and minimize their role in it, DiAngelo substituted sexism for racism.
“It would be like a man walking up to a female co-worker and asking, ‘So, talk to me
about sexism. What has happened to you?'” DiAngelo said. “It’s putting an emotional
and political burden on them. And it’s unfair.”
Instead, we should strive to build authentic relationships across race.
“Being in each others lives, seeing what has happened,” DiAngelo said. “Take the
initiative and look things up like anything else that matters to you. And you have to be
willing to listen.”
You also have to be willing to speak up when we see racial inequality in acts big and
small.
“Break with solidarity,” DiAngelo said. “That’s what we have to do as white people: Be
courageous.”
DiAngelo received her doctorate in multicultural education from the University of
Washington, was a tenured professor in that subject at Westfield State University and
focused her research on Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, “explicating
how Whiteness is reproduced in everyday narratives,” according to her bio.
And while those credentials give her the expertise to speak about race, her own
whiteness benefits her as well.
“Whether we are aware of it or not, the power of implicit bias is that white people tend
to be more open to engaging with that question when it is coming from a fellow white
person,” she said. “Implicit bias grants more legitimacy to their white voice.”
And if we are going to challenge implicit bias, she said, we have to build our capacity to
listen.
We also have to be accountable to people of color, DiAngelo said. Hers can’t be the only
voice. That’s one of the reasons she asked Georgetown University professor and author
Michael Eric Dyson, who is black, to write the foreword to “White Fragility.” In it, Dyson
8/13/2018 Why white people should see color, and more from the author of ‘White Fragility’ | The Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/why-white-people-should-see-color-and-more-from-the-author-of-white-fragility/ 5/7
called the book ” … a bracing call to white folk everywhere to see their whiteness for
what it is and to seize the opportunity to make things better now.
“DiAngelo joins the front ranks of white anti-racist thinkers with a stirring call to
conscience, and most important, consciousness, in her white brothers,” he wrote.
“White fragility is a truly generative idea … an idea whose time has come.”
Indeed, since the election of Donald Trump, people have been emboldened and
validated in their racism.
“It has been given more permission,” DiAngelo said. “I think a lot of the eruption of
racism is the umbrage people took at not being able to express it openly.”
DiAngelo knows of 12 book groups in Seattle reading her last book, “What Does It Mean
to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy.” She appreciates that, it’s definitely
progress. But she has a question: “How will people of color know you read my book?”
“Niceness is not courageous,” DiAngelo said. “Niceness will not get racism on the table.
It takes breaking with white solidarity, and resisting the forces of white fragility.”
So, white people, we need to check ourselves. Stop defending ourselves. Only then will
we learn.
Nicole Brodeur: 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com; on Twitter:
@nicolebrodeur. Nicole Brodeur is a Seattle Times columnist.
Quoted in Sidelights: “Layered with questions and examples, the authors approach the material in a teacherly way, exploring the concepts by nuancing theory with relevant examples.” observed In Education contributor Michael Cappello. He continued: “The authors pose questions, highlighting moments where a perspective check might be needed, where the ideas on offer just might require a change in thinking from dominant ideas. Students reading this book are challenged and supported in challenging their own perspectives.”
“a must-read for anyone interested in or teaching about social justice education or anti-oppressive education.”
Home > Vol 19, No 3 (2014) > Cappello
A Review of Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo
Michael Cappello
University of Regina
During a recent conference, I found it interesting as I listened to academics and educators struggling to articulate and use the language of anti-racism. One teacher suggested that, often, he has to refer to the dictionary in order to make sense of the words being used in these complicated conversations about anti-oppressive theories. Although the ideas are complex, and the social realities and forces being described demand a complex theorizing, the material can be learned. I need to say without hesitation that Is Everyone Really Equal? is a must-read for anyone interested in or teaching about social justice education or anti-oppressive education. The authors should be commended for the clarity and precision; this work is helpful, precisely because of the complexities involved, and how Sensoy and DiAngelo (2012) find the language to take difficult and potentially painful conversations and mediate this content in productive ways.
This is a necessary book, if only because of the Appendix, "How to Engage Constructively in Courses that take a Critical Social Justice Approach." The first thing that strikes me about the appendix is the seriousness with which the authors view the students and the work that students must do in order to learn. Not only is this material hard, it often goes against the self-interest and dominant understandings that students bring to class. For these reasons, the authors lay out some basic considerations that students must reflect on in order to engage these kinds of courses (and the book) in ways that are more meaningful. The steps outlined in the Appendix change the conversation about these topics in some significant ways. First, critical social justice work is marked out as a legitimate area of study that, therefore, must be attended to with humility and rigor. Although difficult, the area includes peer-reviewed, theoretical, empirical, and legitimate content that requires serious attention. Second, the authors highlight the personal nature of this learning and some ways to engage in spite of resistance. Given that most of this material will counter the normalized knowledge that students bring to class, it matters how students engage with the material. Students’ and readers’ identities, as "good" people, as knowers, as citizens are called into question, not only because of the ways in which they are located, but also because of how they might be implicated by knowing these things. The Appendix of the book is brilliant and useful as a starting place for both this work and for classes that take up this kind of content.
Is Everyone Really Equal? starts by examining some theoretical ideas, with chapters that carefully explore critical thinking and critical theory socialization, prejudice and discrimination, oppression and power, and privilege and the invisibility of oppression. Each chapter includes succinct definitions, explained and applied carefully to concrete examples. This weaving of clear and concise content with examples in practice enables a richer understanding of the content on offer. The authors credibly and thoughtfully build a knowledge base for critical social justice understanding.
The thoroughness of the earlier chapters sets readers up for a detailed exploration of racism as one form of oppression. Chapter 7 on racism and Chapter 8 on racism as White supremacy explore in detail how much of the content described earlier can be applied to understanding how racism works. Brief segments contextualize the social construction of race in both US and Canadian contexts. These two chapters enable a nuanced understanding of racism that is rooted in both theory and research, and explained through meaningful examples and stories. More, the misconceptions of students are anticipated and addressed directly. The final section of the chapter on white supremacy includes an excellent section of common White misconceptions of racism, exploring "why can't we all be human" or "playing the race card" or "reverse racism" in ways that allow for these forms of resistance or ignorance to become sites of further understanding. Many who teach in this area will find this "misconceptions" section, along with the broader Chapter 9 on common rebuttals to these conversations worthwhile. The authors take up the resistance to critical social justice through the very common phrases and questions students offer.
I commend the authors for the approach to pedagogy that the book embodies. The book is written as an experience of this content, and is offered intentionally as a way into this material. The use of the language of anti-oppressive theory is modeled in a way that students can try on, and see and hear it being used. Layered with questions and examples, the authors approach the material in a teacherly way, exploring the concepts by nuancing theory with relevant examples (from both Canada and the United States—a rarity in itself—without conflating the two locations and without getting bogged down in exploring the large-scale differences). The authors pose questions, highlighting moments where a perspective check might be needed, where the ideas on offer just might require a change in thinking from dominant ideas. Students reading this book are challenged and supported in challenging their own perspectives. Chapter 10 titled “Putting it all together” offers meaningful suggestions and pathways for readers to begin to act on the ideas in the book that are not easily trivialized or reducible. These suggestions bear the marks of experience with this work and do not pretend that critical social justice work is easy or simple.
If I have one issue with the book, it is a small one. Early on, the authors explain that their intention is not to “inspire guilt or assign blame” (p. xxii) and they offer that guilt and blame are not constructive. Engaging in critical social justice work will have this result—readers and students will feel blamed and guilty. And while I agree that it is important to name this reality and invite readers and students to move past guilt and blame, I think the authors could have done more to both anticipate some of the spaces where guilt and blame might show up and reinforce the problems with remaining in that space. In the practice of anti-oppressive teaching, dominantly positioned students do experience guilt and will resist partly because of the blame they sense. Acknowledging this subtly throughout the book might make it less likely that readers can dismiss or resist the important content that the book makes available.
Is Everyone Really Equal? makes a significant contribution to the literature on critical social justice education. It is both an introduction and an extensive resource in support of students and teachers who are trying to go to these difficult spaces in their work.
Reference
Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2011). Is everyone really equal? An introduction to key concepts in social justice education (Multicultural education series). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Quoted in Sidelights: “merits consideration by all readers interested in social justice education in pluralistic society.”
Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education
Book-Review
Sensoy, Ozlem; DiAngelo, Robin
2017
Teachers College Press
icon
Tags: diversity | multicultural education | social justice
Reviewed by: Frederick Ware
This book is one among fifty others within the Multicultural Education Series. According to the series editor James A. Banks, these books “[summarize and analyze] important research, theory, and practice related to the education of ethnic, racial, cultural, and linguistic groups in the United States and education of mainstream students about diversity” (xiii). Özelm Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo’s book focuses on social justice. For distinction from the commonplace notion of social justice, Sensoy and DiAngelo use the alternative term “critical social justice.” By critical social justice, they mean: (1) recognition of unequal social power relations at the individual and group levels in society; (2) understanding of one’s place within these relations of unequal power; (3) critical thinking on what knowledge is and how it is produced and acquired; and (4) action informed by the best understanding of what social justice is and sound methods for its realization in society (xxi). Sensoy and DiAngelo provide guidelines for teaching and learning social justice.
The book consists of twelve chapters. The chapters include: pictures; charts; figures; vocabulary lists; boxes for definitions of key terms and reminders of ideas and concepts if discussed in a previous chapter; questions for discussion; and instructions for learning activities. The authors intend for persons to read the chapters in their numerical order. The content of the book is cumulative, with each chapter building upon the one that precedes it.
There is an underlying logic in the linear progression of the chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with instructional matters, providing students with guidelines for learning social justice course content (6-18), instructors with guidelines for grading student performance (19-21), and both with an overview of critical theory in social justice courses (25-27). Chapters 3 to 5 define the concepts and operations of culture, socialization, prejudice and discrimination, and oppression and domination (36-40, 51-57, 61-73). Chapters 6 to10 define ableism, sexism, racism, and classism and describe how they pervade social institutions (82-86, 104-115, 123-129, 142-144, 156-162, 177-182). Chapter 11 refutes 13 common statements that are used to discredit social justice education (186-197). Based on Sensoy and DiAngelo’s definition of critical social justice, Chapter 12 specifies four learning outcomes for social justice education and crafts possible scenarios for illustration of the kinds of actions for each outcome (200, 203-204, 207, 211).
Though written primarily for white readers, Sensoy and DiAngelo’s book merits consideration by all readers interested in social justice education in pluralistic society. The series editor notes that “most of the nation’s teachers are white, female, and monolingual” (xii). Using the terms “we” and “us” throughout the book, Sensoy and DiAngelo acknowledge their associations with this demographic group (120). Given the fact of intersectionality – that any one person has multiple associations – race or ethnicity cannot be a person’s only identification (138, 175). The complexity of human subjectivity warrants the concern of all persons with social justice in a world characterized by ever-increasing diversity.
Quoted in Sidelights: “serves as a solid primary course textbook for postsecondary and secondary educators who are committed to activating social justice pedagogy within their practices.”
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 62.2,Summer2016, 226-228Book ReviewIs Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice EducationÖzlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngeloNew York: Teachers College Press, 2012Reviewed by:Anne HalesUniversity of British ColumbiaPublic discourse surrounding such events as the Syrian refugee crisisand 2016 United States presidential election, highlight a continuing need for educators to provide pedagogical spaces for critical conversation about contemporary global issues.These educative efforts can be complicated by gaps in students’ knowledge of current events, media literacy, and critical vocabulary needed to query systemic and ideological underpinnings of persistent patterns of violence and oppression. Educators seeking a course textbook that introduces discourses of critical social justice literacy can find an encouraging resource in Is Everyone Really Equal?An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Özlem Sensoyand Robin DiAngelo. This volume is an addition to the Teachers College PressMulticultural Education Series, edited by James E. Banks. A wide range of students, including high school seniors, undergraduates, and pre-service teachers will find it a challenging introduction to key social justice issues and concepts.Sensoy and DiAngelo open with a discussion of critical thinking and critical theory, the pedagogical and theoretical anchors for conceptual explorations in subsequent chapters. “To think critically,” they write, “means to continuously seek out information that lies beyond our commonsense ideas about the world” (p. 2) and to inform oneself of the historical and cultural contexts of knowledge and socialization. Readers are encouraged to move beyondanecdotal and “popular knowledge” (p. 9) to a critical examination of the social construction of knowledge and positionality. For educators steeped in critical theory and anti-oppressive teaching strategies, this call can seem obvious. However, given the authors’ extensive teaching experience and encounter with resistance to social justice approaches across a broad range of public schools, private institutions, and postsecondary degree programs, they prudently make no assumptions about readers’ initial critical orientations. In Chapters 3 through 8, Sensoy and DiAngelo discuss several major social justice concepts, which include prejudice and discrimination, oppression and power, privilege, invisible or institutional oppression—specifically sexism—and racism. These core chapters include boxed side notes explaining relevant vocabulary and perspective check points, alerting readers to the authors’ particular point of view of a given passage and acknowledging the importance of multiple perspectives inherent toany dialogue. Each thematic chapter ends with discussion questions for further reflection on the authors’ arguments, suggestions for extra activities, ideas for further reading, writing, film/media viewing, and action projects, which are easily adaptable 226© 2016The Governors of the University of Alberta
A Review ofIs Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Educationto a broad range of senior secondary and postsecondary classroom settings. As a postsecondary instructor in teacher education, I found three additional aspects of the book particularly helpful. First, Chapter 9, ‘Yeah, but ... ’ Common Rebuttals, anticipates and provides possible responses for common student reactions and resistance evoked by critical conversation, such as citing exceptions to patterns of inequality or dismissing social justice issues as the “left-wing” rhetoric of certain professors (pp. 132-133). Educators who engage in social justice conversations should be prepared for potentially uncomfortable rebuttals that can compromise students’ space and willingness for critical dialogue. I recall several uneasy moments where the authors’ sensible advice would have bolstered my own unsteady facilitation efforts. Second, the book’s glossary (pp. 180-188) provides readers with a succinct list of key social justice terms and a discussion of how the “evolving nature of language” (p. 180) both constructscategories of identity and makes it “nearly impossible to escape being pressed into rigid social categories” (p. 181). The authors make it clear that they wish to avoid “essentializing” (p. 181) categories of race, gender, and class by providing a dictionary of terms and instead encourage readers to continue to educate themselves about the “politics of language” (p. 181) and the relationship of discourse and thought. The glossary further cautions why certain phrases may be considered derogatory or inappropriate in particular contexts.Third, the book’s appendix presents a framework for How to Engage Constructively in Courses That Take a Critical Social Justice Approach. The authors acknowledge that unsettling dominant ideologies can be “politically and emotionally charged” even within a well-intentioned scholarly context (p. 165). They provide a list of “principles for constructive engagement” (p. 166) for students and instructors, including striving for intellectual humility, which moves beyond anecdotal defensiveness and recognizing one’s own positionality. Sensoy and DiAngelo target the book for audiences in Canada and the United States. Although most themes translate fluidly across international contexts, as a Canadian educator, I would have appreciated more detailed discussion of First Nations, Métis,and Inuit issues, given the focus on indigeneity and indigenous pedagogies in both teacher education and social studies education in many Canadian faculties of education. Striking a balance between breadth and depth when introducing a wide range of social justice subjects, issues, and concepts is challenging. Sensoy and DiAngelo close their book with a clear message to students and teachers alike: to develop critical social justice literacy requires lifelong commitment to “an on-going process,” and to engage in such transformational work compels—demands—that educators begin to “take risks, make mistakes, and act” (p. 162, emphasis in original) no matter how tentativelyor imperfectly. Investigating social justice issues within an educational context remains a complicated yet vital pedagogical endeavour. “Transgressing boundaries” of positionality and identity can be disturbing, even “frightening” (hooks, 1994, p. 9). Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Educationserves as a solid primary course textbook for postsecondary and secondary educators who are committed to activating social justice pedagogy within their practices while preserving the classroom as a “radical space of possibility” (hooks, 1994, p. 12) within the academy. Referencehooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as a practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. 227
A. HalesAnne Halesis a Doctoral Candidatein the Faculty of Education (Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is currently serving as Senior Researcher at the British Columbia Teachers' Federation. Her research interests includeteacher education, beginning teacher mentorship, and Social Studies education.228