Blog Post 6 - White Fragility

 The article "White Fragility" written by Robin DiAngelo posed many important issues related to racial injustice, allyship, and many others. DiAngelo encapsulates the idea of triggers within white fragility stating, "White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. Racial stress results from an interruption to what is racially familiar." (DiAngelo 57). Racial tension insights a response from those who are not exposed or comfortable to such diversity, resulting in an unproductive dichotomy of marginalization of people of color and aggression by the white individuals carrying that racial tension. DiAngelo then goes on to unpack the "Factors that Inculcate White Fragility" by outlining segregation, universalism & individualism, entitlement to racial comfort, racial arrogance, racial belonging, psychic freedom, and finally, constant messages that we are more valuable--through representation in everything (58-63). In fleshing out these concepts, DiAngelo enables their reader to grasp the historical conception of white fragility and how it is upheld in the present day. 

Throughout the remainder of the text, the author brings up different ways in which White Fragility is exemplified in media, institutions, and day-to-day life. As I was digesting this material, I found the issue of diversity in many white people's lives to be a concept that I have personally wrestled with my entire life. Ironically, I engaged in conversation with my fiancé just the other day when he posed the question "Do you think I have white privilege?" As we dove into the topic as we have on many other occasions, it became clear quite quickly that white privilege, along with so many cultural narratives, is incredibly more complex than the average user of the term may understand. Ignorance of this complexity oftentimes results in dangerous and impulsive reactions causing more harm than good. As we dove further into this conversation about white privilege, we dove deeper into the idea of internalized racism and homophobia. I shared my personal experiences of internalized prejudice due to my fundamentalist, sheltered upbringing. He asked me if I ever genuinely held homophobic or racist views. I said yes, reluctantly, recalling a memory of a conversation I had with a friend at twelve. I confidently stated that "gay people should not get married because it is unnatural". Another wretched memory came to mind of when my parents wanted to remove me from my kindergarten class because my teacher was a lesbian. Similarly, with race, I was often exposed to the horrific language used to describe marginalized groups, particularly black and Muslim communities that shaped my impressionable mind. 

As I grew up, exposed myself to the world beyond the walls of a church, wrestled with my own sexual identity, and engaged with the diversity around me, I quickly began to realize how inhumane and wrong those concepts were. A decade later, I am a completely different individual. I stand up to the racial injustice found in my childhood home and in the world around me, I see diversity as a blessing and am a raging bisexual. Within this conversation with my partner and in my own reflections of White Fragility, internalized phobias, and such, I've realized that the lack of diversity--exposure--to the world around me drastically impacted my ability to understand, interact, and improve the culture I was a part of. To this day, I deeply feel the residual impact White Fragility has had on my own life and those I was raised by and around. As DiAngelo states in their text, "Talking directly about white power and privilege, in addition to providing much needed information and shared definitions, is also in itself a powerful interruption of common (and oppressive) discursive patterns around race...Viewing white anger, defensiveness, silence, and withdrawal in response to issues of race through the framework of White Fragility may help frame the problem as an issue of stamina-building, and thereby guide our interventions accordingly." (DiAngelo 67). One cannot fix the problem without getting to its root and reconstructing from the ground up.