Week Six: Chapters 10 & 11: Readings, Questions and Videos

 Stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them.

– Robin DiAngelo

We need to reflect on when we cry and when we don’t, and why. In other words, what does it take to move us?

– Robin DiAngelo

This Week’s Reading

Chapter 10 (pages 123 – 129)

Chapter 11 (pages 131 – 138)

Reading Summary

Chapter 10

The author learned from decades of experience that there are unspoken rules for how to give white people feedback on racist assumptions and patterns. Most notably, the cardinal rule is to not give feedback at all. White fragility punishes the person giving feedback and demands silence. However, feedback is a key element in being able to address and dismantle racism. The guidelines that are typically acceptable insist on white people feeling comfortable and supporting the racial status quo. Focusing on the feedback, instead of the delivery or messenger, is key to building the stamina necessary for continued engagement.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “I repeat: stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them. We do have them, and people of color already know we have them; our efforts to prove otherwise are not convincing.” (p. 129)

Chapter 11

In this chapter, the author reviews the historical impact of white women’s tears on black people and white men. Heartfelt emotions are important; however, when and why we cry is also political. Emotions are shaped by our biases, beliefs, and cultural frameworks, and our emotions drive behaviors that impact other people. When a white woman cries over racism, regardless of her intentions, most of the attention will immediately go to her. For people of color, white tears demonstrate a white person’s racial insulation and privilege.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “We need to reflect on when we cry and when we don’t, and why. In other words, what does it take to move us?” (p. 135)

Week Five: Chapters 7, 8 & 9: Readings, Questions and Videos

 Whiteness accrues privilege and status; gets itself surrounded by protective pillows of resources and/or benefits of the doubt.

– Michelle Fine

Within their insulated environment of racial privilege, whites both expect racial comfort and become less tolerant of stress.

– Robin DiAngelo

In this country, “American” means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

– Toni Morrison

Reading Overview

This Week’s Reading

Chapter 7 (pages 99 – 106)

Chapter 8 (pages 107 – 113)

Chapter 9 (pages 115 – 122)

Reading Summary

Chapter 7

Building upon earlier chapters, this chapter continues to explore what happens when white people are triggered in conversations about race and racism. Most white people can experience racial comfort because they live in insulated environments of racial privilege. Racial stress is triggered when foundational ideologies such as color-blindness, meritocracy, and individualism are challenged, and often white people are unable to respond constructively. Instead, common responses or emotions include anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance.

Optional pre-reading question:

• How has the use of coded language, such as “urban,” “inner city,” and “disadvantaged,” kept you and your colleagues from having open and honest conversations about race and racism in education?

• How does using these terms shift the responsibility for racial inequality from white people to people of color? What is masked by these terms?

Chapter 8

Although research indicates that ideas about race are constructed as early as preschool, white adults often deny that racially based privileges exist. When challenged, white people resort to the discourse of self-defense. In conversations about race, and although no physical violence occurs, white people will characterize themselves as victimized or attacked. Claiming to be unfairly treated, they blame others for their discomfort. In that regard, white fragility is not fragile at all and can be a form of bullying that allows white people to regain control and protect their position.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “In my workshops, I often ask people of color, ‘How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you?’ Eye-rolling, head-shaking, and outright laughter follow, along with the consensus of rarely, if ever. I then ask, ‘What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?’ Recently a man of color sighed and said, ‘It would be revolutionary.’” (p. 113)

Chapter 9

This chapter looks specifically at the common feelings and behaviors that occur when white fragility is in action. The author identifies common claims that are used to justify strong emotional reactions such as arguing, avoiding, denying, or crying. The claims are based on a series of assumptions that are common among the white collective when white fragility is in action. Each of these feelings, behaviors, claims, and assumptions is a function of white fragility. They block any entry point for reflection and engagement.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “White people are receptive to my presentation as long as it remains abstract. The moment I name some racially problematic dynamic or action happening in the room in the moment…white fragility erupts.” (p. 117)

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Group Discussion Questions: (~40 min)

• Start by reflecting together on the group (consider each question one by one)

• What’s going well?

• What could be better?

• What’s missing?

• What have we learned from that we can stop doing?

• Discuss how the “intention” someone holds when communicating can differ from the “impact” they have, in the context of race and racism.

• Where does white fragility show up in your own experience of the world?

• Why do you think many whites see that people of color get preferential treatment when studies show that people of color are discriminated against in education, employment, medicine, and criminal justice?

• How would you like to respond when confronted with white fragility? What would prepare you to respond that way?
  
  It is ok to spend time on one or two questions, don’t expect to make it through all of them.

Week Four: Chapters 5 & 6: Readings, Questions and Videos

 Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen.

– Omowale Akintunde

The dominant paradigm of racism as discrete, individual, intentional, and malicious acts makes it unlikely that whites will acknowledge any of our actions as racism.

– Robin DiAngelo

In this country, “American” means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

– Toni Morrison

Reading Overview

This Week’s Reading

Chapter 5 (pages 71 – 87)

Chapter 6 (pages 89 – 98)

Reading Summary

Chapter 5

Following the civil rights movement era, many people believed that only intentionally malicious acts of extreme prejudice were classified as racist and that only bad people committed those acts. Thus, according to the author, the most effective adaptation of racism—the good/bad binary—became a cultural norm. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand— much less interrupt—racism. The chapter ends by looking at some of the most popular claims within the good/bad binary and providing counter narratives to the claims.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the not racist side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do.” (p. 73)

Chapter 6

White supremacy impacts all people of color, however, black people represent the ultimate racial “other,” leading to a uniquely anti-black sentiment integral to white identity. In this chapter, the author explains that anti-blackness is rooted in misinformation, fables, perversions, projections, and lies about African Americans. As a result, white racial socialization causes many conflicting feelings toward black people, including benevolence, resentment, superiority, hatred, and, most fundamentally, deep guilt about past and current systematic transgressions against black people.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “Creating a separate and inferior black race simultaneously created the ‘superior’ white race: one concept could not exist without the other. In this sense, whites need black people; blackness is essential to the creation of white identity.” (p. 91)

Supplemental Resources

Debunking The Most Common Myths White People Tell About Race

Implicit Association Test (Scroll to the bottom and click I wish to proceed, then click Race IAT on the following page. Feel free to Decline to Answer any of the survey questions before and after the test.)

Discussion Questions:

• How does the understanding of racism as "a structure, not an event” impact your perspective?

• Which of the color-blind or color-celebrate narratives connected to the good/bad binary have you used (p. 77), either in the past or in the present?
  For example:

• I was taught to treat everyone the same

• Focusing on race is what divides us

• I have friends or family members who are people of color

• We don’t like how white our neighborhood is, but we had to move here for the schools

• I marched in the sixties

• What is it like for you to hear someone acknowledge their own racism? What is it like for you to acknowledge it in yourself?

• Where do you see the influence of anti-black messages in your own thinking?

Week Three Readings, Questions and Videos

I don’t want you to understand me better, I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance.

– Ijeoma Oluo

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms.

– Peggy McIntosh

My silence is not benign because it protects and maintains the racial hierarchy and my place within it.

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Reading Overview

This Week’s Reading

Chapter 3 (pages 39 – 50)

Chapter 4 (pages 51 – 69)

Reading Summary

Chapter 3

A simplistic understanding of racism leads people to believe that the civil rights movement and the desegregation of public facilities generally ended racist practices. However, racism is highly adaptable and modern norms, policies, and practices have resulted in racial outcomes similar to those in the past. Color-blind ideology, although initially well-intentioned, makes it difficult to address unconscious racist beliefs and has served to deny the reality of racism—thus holding it in place. Finally, cultural norms insist that white people hide racism from people of color and deny it around other white people, which also makes it impossible to confront and address racism.

Chapter 4

As a reminder, racial identity shapes a person’s perspectives, experiences, and responses. In this chapter, the author delves into eight foundational aspects of white fragility. The author explains that because of their racial identification, white people in the United States will generally feel a sense of belonging, be free from the burden of race, have freedom of movement, and will be considered just people. People of color typically do not have the same experience. In addition, white people are most likely to choose racial segregation and position themselves as racially innocent. Those two choices, along with an obliviousness to the country’s racial history, can lead white people to romanticize ideas about the good old days. Finally, white solidarity, which is an unspoken agreement among white people to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort, is key in maintaining white supremacy.

Optional pre-reading question:

Reflect on this quote from the book: “But my silence is not benign because it protects and maintains the racial hierarchy and my place within it.” (p. 58)

Supplemental Resources

Why Color Blindness Will NOT End Racism (beginning at 2:25)

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack