Critical Race Theory (Part 4): A Look at Robin DeAngelo’s Book, “White Fragility”–A Summary of Her Arguments

Here in the next part of my series looking at critical race theory, I am going to take two posts to look at Robin DiAngelo’s best-selling book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. For reference, here are the links to Parts 1-3:
Part 1: Too Hot to Handle
Part 2: Storytelling and Intersectionality
Part 3: CRT Today-Is It Marxist?

DiAngelo is not a critical race theorist, in that she doesn’t study and write on critical race theory in the academic world. Rather, she is a sociologist and a diversity trainer. Nevertheless, it is quite apparent to anyone who basically knows what critical race theory is that her book, White Fragility, is taking all its cues from critical race theory. In short, she’s not a critical race theorist, but she uses CRT as the lens through which she analyzes society.

Instead of going through her book, chapter by chapter, as I often do when I write a book analysis here on my blog, I am going to rather try to sum up DiAngelo’s main argument she makes in her book, and then discuss some of the main issues I have with the book. So, let’s start with a summary of her main argument (along with defining the main terms she uses).

The Main Argument of White Fragility
DiAngelo begins her book by saying that people often accuse her of engaging in “identity politics,” and they are right. She admits that she is generalizing about “white people” and writing to the “white collective.” And what she wants white people to see is (in true CRT fashion) that the American system is fundamentally rooted in racism and that white people are connected to that system of racism. DiAngelo makes clear, though, that when she tells white people they are racist, she is not all white people have a conscious dislike of people of color and are therefore immoral people. In fact, she is not applying “racism” to anyone’s individual actions. Rather, DiAngelo redefines “racism” as a system, the American system. It is “A deeply embedded historical system of institutional power” (24). Or if I can put it this way, DiAngelo is saying, “The root of racism is the system, not individual acts.”

Working from that assumption, DiAngelo also uses a number of terms that need to be clearly understood. First, there is white fragility. She defines it as when white people act upset and offended when you say they are racist or are doing something you perceive to be racist. That reaction of acting upset and offended, DiAngelo says, is “born of superiority and entitlement” and is a “powerful means of white racial control and protection of white advantage” that helps “hold the racial hierarchy in place” (2). Translation? If you’re a white person who objects to be called racist, or claims you are not racist, then you are engaging in sort of a passive-aggressive power move to maintain your superior position in society as a white person.

Second, there is white privilege. DiAngelo defines this as the advantage white people have in not having to face racial barriers in society, and their assumption that the “white experience” is the “standard for human experience,” and their assumption that “people of color are a deviation from that norm” (25).

Third, there is white supremacy. While most people tend to think of “white supremacy” in terms of the KKK or neo-Nazis, DiAngelo expands the definition to mean a sociopolitical system of domination. Specifically, she says it is “a useful term to capture the all-encompassing centrality and assumed superiority of people defined and perceived as white and the practices based on that assumption” (28). Even more specifically, she applies this term to “global European domination”—i.e. modern Western society.

Fourth, she makes a distinction between prejudice, discrimination, and racism. Prejudice is when someone prejudges another person based on his/her social groups. DiAngelo makes clear that everyone does this. For example, a black person assumes white people can’t jump or don’t have any rhythm, or a white person assumes all black people like hip hop. Discrimination is when someone takes actual action against someone in a different social group based on that prejudice. Again, DiAngelo states that any-and-everyone can discriminate. It doesn’t matter if one is white, black, Asian, or Hispanic.

Racism, though, is different according to DiAngelo. She defines racism as when a racial group’s prejudice becomes embedded in the law and therefore is backed by the legal authority of institutional control. Therefore, according to DiAngelo’s definition, people of color can have prejudices and can discriminate, but they cannot be racist because they don’t have institutional power or privilege over white people, because according to DiAngelo’s fundamental assumption, the American system itself is racist. Therefore, white people, by virtue of being white, have the backing of the racist American system, and therefore participate in that racist system whether they realize it or not—and in that sense, all white people are racist.

How DiAngelo’s Argument is Like The Matrix
Given all that, that thus explains the intended purpose of DiAngelo’s book. Her goal is to get white people to realize all this. She wants white people to acknowledge that the system itself is racist and that they are complicit in that racist system. To use an analogy from the film The Matrix, DiAngelo is saying that the racist American system is sort of like the Artificial-Intelligence machines that run the Matrix and the agents who go into the Matrix to police it. If you’re in the Matrix, it’s almost impossible to see the system for what it is, because the agents who police it can morph into many forms in order to maintain power.

In a similar way, DiAngelo says that the American racist system morphs itself in a variety of ways to maintain white supremacy and power. First, she points to what she calls the two “Western ideologies” of individualism and objectivity. Individualism is the claim that in America there are no intrinsic barriers to one’s success, and that with hard work and determination, it is possible to succeed. DiAngelo says this is racist (and sexist) because it completely denies group identity. Objectivity is the claim that there are certain things that are really right and really wrong, really true and really false, and that it is possible for all people to come to a general consensus on these things. DiAngelo says this too is racist because the claim of “objectivity” is a product of the European Enlightenment, and thus a claim of white people who can’t see their claims of “objectivity” are made from the subjective lens of European whiteness, and therefore it is rooted in the assumption that the “white experience” is the “objective standard” against which everything is to be measured.

Second, DiAngelo speaks of, when the old type of overt racism of both the pre-Civil War South and then the Jim Crow South was ended by both the Civil War and then the Civil Rights Act of 1964, how the system was able to adapt into new kinds of racism. There is colorblind racism, when white people say they agree with MLK Jr. and say they want to judge people on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This, though, DiAngelo says, ignores the racism embedded in the system.

Then there is aversive racism, when white progressives say things like, “I have black friends,” while still “rationalizing racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access ‘good schools” (43) and using coded terms like “urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighborhoods” (43) to mask their racism. Thus, DiAngelo says, these white progressives feel good about themselves, but are still racist.

Finally, there is cultural racism, which DiAngelo defines as society’s message that being white is better than being black. DiAngelo claims that the system is already conditioning white children as early as preschool to develop a sense of white superiority. In fact, later in the book she even claims that “racist forces were shaping me even before I took my first breath” (51). This kind of racism, DiAngelo, is seen in the kind of literature taught in schools, namely white literature like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and John Steinbeck. They are presented as representing the universal human experience, but they are all white, so they’re not—and that is how the system perpetuates racism. DiAngelo also touches upon how beauty standards and traditional family values are also racially problematic.

DiAngelo’s Main Thesis in a Few Quotes
In my second post on White Fragility, I will offer a critique of DiAngelo’s book, but in this post, I simply wanted to try to lay out the main points she makes in her book. I want to end this post with a few specific quotes that I feel further crystalize her book’s argument. In light of what I’ve shared regarding DiAngelo’s main arguments and views expressed in her book, ponder these quotes and ask yourself if you agree or disagree with them, and why.

“The white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: That we are capable and guilty of perpetuating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others” (95).

“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions” (129).

“A positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist. White people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy. This does not mean we should stop identifying as white and start claiming to be Italian or Irish. To do so is to deny the reality of racism in the here and now, and this denial would simply be colorblind racism. Rather, I strive to be ‘less white.’ To be ‘less white’ is to be less racially oppressive” (150).

“Our institutions were designed to reproduce racial inequality and they do so with efficiency” (153).