White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About… (utgåvan 2018)

Hard work but worthwhile. ( )

Generally, we tend to think about racism in terms of mean people doing mean things to people of color. If we don't kidnap and lynch people anymore, how can we be racist? Well, we can be racist in that we engage blithely in a system that is tilted in our favor, and refuse to recognize that fact. So, we need to re-calibrate what racism means.

We may not be intentionally engaging in a system of racism, we just benefit from it. But, when that is pointed out to us, we get all defensive. What we need to do is recognize our natural defensiveness and try to re-learn how to engage people. If I do something some finds racially offensive, I would best ask for explanations so I can change my behavior. Most of us won't do that. We just get huffy and continue doing whatever it was that was hurtful in the first place. After all, our racist behavior doesn't hurt us, right? Well, it does. It signals that we're falling far short of the second commandment to treat other folks as we would wish them to treat us.


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The benefit of reading this book is in its examples of unintentional racism and making the reader think about the issues surrounding race and how racism manifests in society and our individual behavior. Additionally it's popularity (my local school district has had all teachers read this book) can give people a common point of reference to work from to improve race relations and its advocacy of seeking out more information to understand and overcome racism is laudable. From the prospective of an academic, corporate diversity presenter and white person the author discusses the problem of white fragility and presents examples of it from her experience. Some of the arguments are circular and disheartening (i.e. black people can't improve the system, and due to the attitudes of white people (particularly white female progressives such as herself) white people won't improve the system) and her definitions are harsh and make a white reader uncomfortable but that is a large point of this book, that discomfort is necessary to look at this problem and make things better for everyone.
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I rarely write reviews mostly because I feel I'm not that good at it and probably more than a bit of laziness. At any rate, this book is trash. The only upside to my experience with this book is that I got it at the library and didn't waste my paycheck on it. Ijeoma Oluo's 'So you want to talk about race' is a far superior book that does not require the reader (if they're white) to self-flagellate themselves or rub ash solely for being born white in America. She has probably the best explanation of institutional racism I've read or heard and the section on micro-aggression was equally enlightening without insulting the reader. ( )

The biggest issue I see with this book is a white woman taking credit for the work already done by black women. ( )