Sublime

The racial status quo is comfortable for white people, and we will not move forward in race relations if we remain comfortable. The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean

Example 3: White Fragility: Why It Is So Hard to Talk to White People about Race by Robin DiAngelo (2018)

People of color sometimes cope with abuse from individual Whites by hiding those individuals behind the generalized banner of Whiteness. “She acted that way,” we say, “because she is White.”

“Because the new racial climate in America forbids the open expression of racially based feelings, views, and positions, when whites discuss issues that make them uncomfortable, they become almost incomprehensible.”7 Probing forbidden racial issues results in verbal incoherence—digressions, long pauses, repetition, and self-corrections.

These self-defense claims work on multiple levels. They identify the speakers as morally superior while obscuring the true power of their social positions. The claims blame others with less social power for their discomfort and falsely describe that discomfort as dangerous. The self-defense approach also reinscribes racist imagery. By positioning t

DiAngelo also rejects the liberal principles of individualism and “color blindness”—that a person’s race is irrelevant to her worth, as Martin Luther King, Jr., argued. Liberal values are, in The Truth According to Social Justice, racist because they enable white people to hide from the “realities” of their own racism and white supremacy. DiAngelo

many white participants who lived in white suburban neighborhoods and had no sustained relationships with people of color were absolutely certain that they held no racial prejudice or animosity. Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a matter of nice people versus mean people.