White Fragility Chapter 7: White Triggers

Chapter 6 is up today in the controversial book, White Fragility.

Previous Posts
Introduction
Chapter 1: Challenges of Talking Race
Chapter 2: Definitions--Racism and White Supremacy
Chapter 3: Racism after the Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 4: How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
Chapter 5: The Good/Bad Binary
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness

Chapter 7: Racial Triggers for White People
1. As I start this post, I am coming from the second to last class of the summer Race and American Christianity class at Houghton College. (The course/webinar will be offered again in October, by the way.) Tonight's class was on the penal system. I knew some pieces of what was shared but I was really blown away on so many levels.

Perhaps I shouldn't say but I was really struck by the enormity of ignorance of the culture in which I grew up. I shouldn't be surprised because seminary had already made this abundantly clear in relation to the Bible. Take what happened to the mentally ill under the Reagan administration. They were turned out to the streets. Then many of them found their way back into the penal system. In fact, many institutions for the mentally ill were converted to prisons.

Then with the privatization of prisons, prisons become a big business at the state's expense. Incarceration has dramatically increased. I heard about districts in Erie County that are drawn specifically to get the funding from the numbers of (non-voters) in prison which then go to the small district drawn around it. It certainly sounds like a racket. I must say, my faith in American institutions in general is lower than it has ever been.

2. Again, the idea of white fragility relates to the phenomenon of how white individuals tend to have intense emotional reactions when it is suggested that they may not be as free of racial bias as they think and that the culture is generally rigged in their favor. Common responses include "anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance" (101).

She suggests some of the sources for these reactions are:

• social taboos about talking about race
• the binary of "you're either good or bad" on this issue
• underlying resentment of people of color
• the belief that we are objective on these issues
• subconscious biases we don't want to acknowledge
• the benefits of believing we have earned our favored status
• inherited anti-black sentiments

Here are some of the suggestions that she has observed trigger such emotional responses:

• the suggestion that a white person's viewpoint is not objective but comes from a racialized point of reference
• people of color sharing their experiences of racial bias in society
• people of color correcting a white perspective on their own experiences
• white individuals disagreeing with the default white narrative
• the claim that access is unequal between races
• people of color in positions of leadership
• stories of people of color not behaving according to the scripts of racial bias
• denial that the typical white narrative is universal

3. She tells a story at the end of the chapter about some teachers who almost brought a lawsuit on their school because they were not able to distinguish between their individual intentions and the impact of words on others. This relates to the individualism she has talked about and the reduction of racism to one's intentions.

This is an important distinction. In working for racial reconciliation, it is not just a matter of whether a person has good intentions. We need to consider the impact of our words and actions as well. A former colleague of mine used to say something like, "Yes, yes, you all are nice (white) people. But you harm people of color unintentionally in your ignorance." S/he wasn't quite that blunt. :-)

4. A framework DiAngelo uses in this chapter comes from Pierre Bourdieu, known for his concept of the habitus. Our habitus is our normal way of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to things in our environment. When there is disequilibrium in our habitus, it rebounds to maintain our social comfort and helps us regain our balance. This happens unconsciously.

DiAngelo applies this concept to white fragility. When our racial habitus, our white racial status quo, is disturbed, we unconsciously respond in a defensive way that tries to re-establish our stability.