What’s My Complicity? Talking White Fragility With Robin DiAngelo
Summer 2019
"For well-intentioned white people doing anti-racist and social justice work, the first meaningful step is to recognize their fragility around racial issues—and build their emotional stamina. 'White Fragility' author Robin DiAngelo breaks it down."
There's also a video of the interview.
"The New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism sat down with Teaching Tolerance to discuss why working against one’s own fragility is a necessary part of white anti-racist work—and why good intentions don’t matter."
"Foundationally [we] have to change our idea of what it means to be racist. As long as you define a racist as an individual who intentionally is mean, based on race, you’re going to feel defensive. When I say you’ve been shaped by a racist system—that it is inevitable that you have racist biases and patterns and investments—you’re going to feel offended by that. You will hear it as a comment on your moral character. You’re going to feel offended by that if you don’t change how you’re interpreting what I just said. And I would actually agree with anyone who felt offended when I say, “It is inevitable that you are racist,” if their definition of a racist is someone who means harm.
When we understand racism as a system that we have been raised in and that its impact is inevitable, it’s really not a question of good or bad. It’s just, “I have it. I have been socialized into it.” And so, “What am I going to do about it?” is really the question. And that’s where, I think, maybe some guilt could come in, when you know that and you’re still not going to do anything about it. I don’t struggle with guilt because, to the best of my ability, I am trying to challenge my socialization. So, let me be really clear: As a result of being raised as a white person in this society, I have a racist worldview. I have racist biases. I have developed racist patterns as a result, and I have investments in the system of racism. It’s incredibly comfortable. It’s certainly helped me with the barriers that I do face. And I also have investments in not seeing anything I just said—because of what it would suggest to me about my identity as a good person, if I’m coming from the dominant definition, and what it would actually require of me in action. I don’t feel guilty about that, but I do feel responsible for what I do with that socialization.
Change how you understand what it means to be racist, and then act on that understanding. Because if you change your understanding, but you don’t do anything different, then you’re colluding."
Here's something I believe is too differential:
"I don’t call myself a white ally. I’m involved in anti-racist work, but I don’t call myself an anti-racist white. And that’s because that is for people of color to decide, whether in any given moment I’m behaving in anti-racist ways. And notice that that keeps me accountable. It’s for them to determine if in any given moment—it’s not a fixed location—I haven’t made it or arrived…"