Free Republic

White fragility refers to a range of defensive behaviors through which white people deflect conversations about race and racism in order to protect themselves from race-based stress. Because white people tend to live in environments where whiteness is both dominant and invisible, they grow accustomed to racial comfort, as a result of which even a small amount of racial stress becomes intolerable. This helps explain why talking about white supremacy can feel more painful to white people than white supremacy itself, why the ostensible "stifling" of debate can feel more pressing than the literal strangulation of Eric Garner and how...

NEA: ‘White supremacy culture has fashioned a social norm ...’ America’s largest teachers union has resolved to incorporate the concept of “white fragility” into its staff training and development programs, literature, and “other existing communications on social, gender, LGBTQIA, and racial justice,” to the extent that existing budgets and context permit.The proposal was approved by delegates to the National Education Association’s recent annual conference in Houston.The NEA offered this rationale for the action: “White supremacy culture has fashioned a social norm insulating white people from the impact of racial stress, which consequentially constructs a social atmosphere that depresses the ability of...

Business is booming for Robin DiAngelo, a retired sociologist and the author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Since resigning from Westfield State University three years ago, DiAngelo has become a full-time “writer and presenter.” What she writes about is the pathological inability of white people to understand their passive complicity in America’s “white supremacist culture,” and whom she presents it to is white people looking for lessons in how to overcome it. “Now breathe,” she instructs her readers. “I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open...