Observing White Fagility

Almost 5 years since reading the book by Robin DiAngelo

When I read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo in the summer of 2020, I had only started my anti-Racism reading and learning. The phenomena discussed in the book felt academic as it wasn’t something I had personally observed yet.

My reading of "White Fragility"

The Oxford Languages dictionary Google search uses defines “White Fragility” as:

noun: white fragility

discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice.

"her indignant reaction comes off as the quintessential combination of white fragility and white privilege"

I felt considerable discomfort at having been oblivious to different ways of experiencing the world than I had been socially programmed with. I don’t remember feeling individual defensiveness. The lack of individual defensiveness might relate to my specific Autism profile, and my not accepting social hierarchies or social constructs as strong parts of my personal identity.

Since 2020 I have unfortunately observed the pattern fairly regularly. I want to discuss racism as a systems person from a systems perspective. No matter how much I try to focus on the larger social hierarchy and systems, some people will assume I’m talking about an individual's bad behaviour.

My privileges, and my systems mental block around race.

They take the entire conversation about racism as being an attack on them personally, or on their personal identity, rather than being about a social construct that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s biology (including their own).

It has happened with biological family members, acquaintances, coworkers, and even long-time close friends. I’ve noticed the pattern, and the conversation going all the way to “you think I am some racist uncle” (or reading from their playbook, etc). Once they have focused on the misunderstanding of racism as being about individuals and their individual behaviour, I’ve learned there is no way to get out of that black-hole other than to disengage.

It has been hard to disengage from some family and friends, but I don’t see I’m given a choice.

While I’ve never accused any individual of being an individual “racist”, I have people in my life who insist I have. I’ve even written about how many racist beliefs I have and still hold, as nobody is immune to social programming (regardless of biological traits). My being Autistic did not protect me, even if it did allow me to more easily not feel defensive as these social constructs weren’t as deeply embedded into my identity. I’m not calling myself an individual “racist”, and yet they believe I’m accusing them of something which makes no sense to me.

I am aware my ideas are different from most of the people around me, and that isn’t an issue. The issue comes when someone wants to try to change what I think: demanding I go back in time to before I learned something – whether anti-racism, anti-colonialism, democratic reform, or any other of my special interest that I’ve done consideral deep-dives on. Alternatively they may spend most interactions trying to defend against a personal accusation that was never made.

All I can do is point people to some of the literature, and hope they spend the time to think about how these social constructs and social programming work. Those of us living within Western cultures have been socially programmed from birth on individualism, which makes it so much harder to recognize and protect oneself from harmful social programming.