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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press. 

To cite the Beacon Press blurb (linked above) about this New York Times best-seller: "In this 'vital, necessary, and beautiful book' (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and 'allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’' (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively."

The Beacon Press website also includes several reading/discussion guides and a quiz to see if you exhibit white fragility.

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Aletha D Stahl onto White Fragility and Its Critiques

White Fragility and Its Critiques

In her 2018 book, White fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism, Robin DiAngelo identifies why white people often have negative reactions (anger, fear, guilt, etc.) when asked to challenge their assumptions about race and points out how these negative reactions perpetuate racial injustice. Her arguments have been both lauded -- Ibram X. Kendi recommends it for white readers on his anti-racist reading list -- and criticized. This collection brings together the book and several perspectives on it in hopes of stimulating productive reflection around antiracism. 

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Aletha D Stahl