Book Review: White Fragility Introduction

1. Ed Stetzer and Christianity Today are beginning a conversation about the book, White Fragility: Why its so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin DiAngelo. Race is very much in focus right now given the incidents that happened one right after the other this year--George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks. Of course these sorts of incidents seem quite frequent.

I have been part of a class and webinar we are running at Houghton College in response to this moment. We will run it again in October. The webinar portion will be free then, as this time. We are also going to run a course starting August 29 called, "Reinventing Evangelicalism."

People don't like to talk about race. Over the last few years, I have found that hardly any topic is more likely to cause people to come up for air in my feed on Facebook as something related to race. The responses to this issue are so predictable that I created a "Race Bingo" card with some of the things people say when issues of race are first mentioned to them. These are responses like, "I have a black friend," "Don't get political," and "I don't see color."

2. The response to Stetzer's link to CT's first article on Twitter was both astounding and entirely predictable. I doubt the vast majority of those who responded have even read the book. It seems obvious to me that this response comes from the attention given the book by people like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and others. It's almost impossible to have a calm discussion of the book and its concepts because the well has been poisoned.

The material presented in CT's first article, which summarizes the book, does not seem to merit this response. Indeed, the tone of the preface to the book is anything but cocky. But the response was so virulent, so harsh on Twitter that I decided I needed to finish reading the book. Indeed, I decided I should blog on it with an open heart and a critical mind. I read chapter 2 as part of the course on Race. I now sense I should read the rest.

As I picked up the book again, I marveled at how well the introduction describes exactly what took place on Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed. DiAngelo writes, "In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer, I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way" (2). She goes on to say, "These responses were so predictable--so consistent and reliable--I was able to stop taking the resistance personally" (3). Indeed, the Twitter feed exquisitely proved her point.

3. In the Foreword to White Fragility, Michael Eric Dyson says this: "Whiteness is a fiction, what in the jargon of the academy is termed a social construct, an agreed-on myth that has empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence" (ix). I first began to understand this concept at Wesley Seminary, when I read selections from Cane Hope Felder's, Stony the Road we Trod.

"Black" was a category of the slave-trade, that lumped all Africans together as slaves. They did not see themselves as one race. Prior to the slave trade, they were from varied African tribes. They were not a "black" race. "White" then came to existence as a counterpoint, lumping the lighter skinned slave owners together, all western Europeans. "White" comes to exist as that which owns the slave and is superior to it. Before then, they were Portuguese and Spanish and English and Dutch.

But we behave according to that which we think. So as we think of ourselves as black or white, so we behave, and so perception becomes a reality because of its effect. I am thoroughly convinced of this interpretation of historical development. In fact, I consider this understanding quite profound, the stuff of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault. I'm so convinced that I only think there are two options--either you understand and agree, or you just don't really understand yet.

DiAngelo puts it this way: 'While there is no biological race as we understand it, race as a social construct has profound significance" (5).

The Foreword has a quote by Beyonce that I think is quite relevant: "It's been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we're protesting America" (xi). I would add that elements of whiteness are so intertwined in some people's Christianity that to critique elements of whiteness can be seen as anti-Christian. How is believing that "black lives matter" anti-Christian, for example?

4. In her Author's Note, she has a number of interesting comments.

• "Exclusion by those at the table doesn't depend on willful intent; we don't have to intend to exclude for the results of our actions to be exclusion" (xiii). Quite true. It is easy not to see those who aren't in the "in" group when you are.
• "All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics" (xiv). That is to say, it is only when we are focusing on the barriers that people experience because of their identities that change happens, whether it be emancipation, women's suffrage, or civil rights. "This book is unapologetically rooted in identity politics" (xiv).
• She acknowledges that this issue is very complex. What about a multiracial person? She hints at the concept of intersectionality, which has to do with the multiple identities we often have.

An issue I think I should emphasize is the awkwardness she feels as a white person writing about race. "In speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am yet again centering white people and the white voice. I have not found a way around this dilemma" (xiv). One notes, however, that when women did not have the right to vote, only men could vote to change the situation.

5. In the introduction, she introduces the concept of "white fragility." It refers to how angry and defensive "white people" can get when you talk about race. It is Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed.

There is a force to "reinstate white equilibrium" whenever resistance to the status quo is introduced into the equation. This is real. I've experienced it as a leader. For every push against racism there seems to be a greater and opposite reaction. She tells the story of a man who pounded his fist on the table about how difficult it was for a white man to get a job now... in a work room that was 95% white.

DiAngelo makes some clarifying remarks in the introduction. Many of those in her sessions did not have any relationship with a person of color. This is a key factor in paradigm change. I've seen it on the Wesleyan Pastor's page. Now that the Wesleyan Church has some pastors of color, one cannot bring glib stereotypes about people who are in the room. It is the same thing with protests--when many Wesleyan pastors have marched, you can't accuse them all of being communists and anarchists.

It's not about being nice or mean people. Peter was a nice person and he still didn't see the Greek-speaking widows in Acts 6.

The book is aimed at white progressives. "I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color" (5). A white progressive, in this scenario, is someone who thinks he or she already gets it but doesn't really. Perhaps I will later disagree with her on who she includes in this category, but I get what she's saying. I've seen it in myself and others. We think we've arrived. We think we're "color blind." So we don't do anything to change the status quo. We don't realize our part in the perpetuation of an inequitable situation.