White Fragility

White Fragility

Adult nonfiction
My loved ones and I benefit undeservedly from white privilege in
a racist society. My partner can drive his pick up truck without
continuously being pulled over by police with hands on guns. He can
don his blaze orange in hunting season secure in the knowledge that
people will get that he's after deer, not rival gang members. As a
teen my son could walk to the store at night to buy Skittles and a
soda. My daughters weren't seen as hypersexual or dangerously defiant
in middle and high school. No one's suggesting that I'm in a
competitive graduate school for any reason other than ability and good
study habits or that my being admitted kept someone more qualified and
deserving out. That's only the tip of the privilege iceberg.
So why do so many people with skin the color of mine get all
bent out of shape by the suggestion that Obama's election hasn't
ushered in some post racial utopia? Robin Diangelo gives us answers
in her cogent and comprehensive White Fragility. We believe that
we're unique thinkers even though we've been indoctrinated by a racist
culture since birth. We don't even see that we have a racial
identity, believing that our perceptions and feelings are objective
and normative. We reduce racism to a good guy/bad guy narrative in
which if we aren't riding around in robes and hoods or trash talking
minoritized people over Thanksgiving turkey we can rest on our
laurels. Nothing to do with us.
That's where white fragility comes in. When the falsities of
those lines of thinking are called we can become (and feel entitled to
be) as mad as wet hornets. Whether we start yelling, withdraw
physically or psychologically from the conversation, or dissolve into
tears that shift the focus of the discourse to our discomfort, it's
all bad. It's all dangerous for a number of reasons including that it
it helps perpetuate the whole damn racist white privilege system.
Diangelo, who is white, gives us wonderful, hard won advice on
how to get beyond our fears and biases and engage productively in much
needed conversations. This poignant and perceptive book is a must
read for whites like me who want to be participants in the solution
rather than perpetrators of the problem.
On a purrrsonal note, there's an old song that talks about "always
something there to remind me." It sure is true about Joey cat. Here
are just three examples. Last week we had snow that stuck around
instead of just melting. Friday a week ago I came home to see my
steps and porch covered with purrrfect little pawprints courtesy of
our neighborhood outside cats. The same day I was at a program on
racial/ethnic communications. At the very end the speaker/facilitator
blindsided me by having us go around and name our best source of
stress relief. I said cat cuddling before I lost my precious Joey to
cancer after 16 wonderful years. Then a week later I saw some
students tabling. They had a rainbow of nail polishes and were set up
to do people's nails for free. It was about cancer awareness. There
was a color for every kind of cancer. I let them paint my nails white
(lung cancer) in Joey's memory. (I don't bother to do my nails but I
plan to buy white polish and nail polish remover and painting my nails
every day I don't work.) They were collecting stories so I wrote
Joey's down.
Eugene has been at camp since Thursday morning. The house is so
lonely without Joey. I've been sleeping in my studio in Eugene's
absence, not only because it's very close to the furnace, but because
it was where I shared so many wonderful times with Joey and is full of
reminders like his portrait and his cat bed. Of course I slept with
his blanket because I can't sleep without it.
A great big shout out goes out to the best little cat in the world who
loved me.
jules hathaway


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