Scan barcode
Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
12 reviews
solnit_and_sebastian's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
An illuminating and imperative text that should be required reading for white Americans.
"I often ask people of color, 'How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you? . . . What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?' Recently a man of color sighed and said, 'It would be revolutionary.' I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of that response. It would be revolutionary if we could receive, reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, the man's response points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, it indicates how simple it can be to take responsibility for our racism." (DiAngelo, p. 113)
"I often ask people of color, 'How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you? . . . What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?' Recently a man of color sighed and said, 'It would be revolutionary.' I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of that response. It would be revolutionary if we could receive, reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, the man's response points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, it indicates how simple it can be to take responsibility for our racism." (DiAngelo, p. 113)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, and Racial slurs
Minor: Rape, Slavery, and Murder
vaekay's review
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
While Dr. Robin DiAngelo reflects wonderfully on white fragility, white supremacy, and how all white people perpetuate racism on a continuum, I would like to challenge her usage of the term "blacks" to describe Black people. I have been told my numerous Black people that they consider the term "blacks" offensive in the last 15 years, and I am sort of shocked that this went through the printing process with that unchecked. Admittedly, she also uses the term "whites" for white people, but I don't think that that matters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, and Police brutality
vavocado's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism
missrosymaplemoth's review
4.0
A good start for any white person needing to look inward to how they contribute to racism.
P.129 “White people raised
P.129 “White people raised
in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview
because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your
workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others. I repeat: stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don't have them. We do have them, and people of color already know we have them; our efforts to prove otherwise are not convincing. An honest accounting of these patterns is no small task given the power of white fragility and white solidarity, but it is necessary.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Racial slurs, and Police brutality
stevia333k's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.5
this book was published before "they were her property" came out, so the history surrounding how white women getting the vote is a model for other marginalized communities' assimilation is slightly debunked. basically even though white men still had to grant white women the right to vote, white women still had "property" which back then white women inherited enslaved captives, while white men inherited land. I say this because a lot of the book is about reconciling PWI's with people of color (with an emphasis on white vs black due to WASP enslavement), it was awkward to hear how a lot of firms that hired her didn't want her to do her job... basically i liked this book more than "black klansman", and it does clarify a lot about how the role of white person works. there were 4 areas of this book that I got a lot of value from, but I'm still compiling them.
---
I listened to the audiobook. there was a lot of lists read off, so maybe the print edition has something to faciliate that?
So there's 4 bits of this book that I would consider highlights. I divided this book into quarters because it was a 6 hour audiobook that I listened to at double speed.
Somewhere in the 1st quarter (turns out it's chapter 2) she points out that white people dominate job fields in the 80%+ & 90%+. Like to be blunt, I knew that in post-apartheid South Africa, white people still had like 90% of the shit even though they only made up of 10% of the population, but that systemic domination explains the various KKK vibes I'd get.
Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the
ten richest in the world)
US Congress: 90 percent white
US governors: 96 percent white
Top military advisers: 100 percent white
President and vice president: 100 percent white
US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white
Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white
People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white
People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white
People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white
People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white
People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time,
worldwide: 95 percent white
Teachers: 82 percent white
Full-time college professors: 84 percent white
Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white
Also this thing, among other passages towards the 3rd quarter of the book also showed the horror of the racism. I had a black friend in pre-school & apparently I process not seeing her after that is something my body has processes as a missing persons case.
- To get a sense of the white racial frame below the surface of your conscious awareness, think back to the earliest time that you were aware that people from racial groups other than your own existed. People of color recall a sense of always having been aware, while most white people recall being aware by at least age five.
- [...]
- If you lived and went to school in racial segregation as most people in the United States do, you had to make sense of the incongruity between the claim that everyone was equal and the lived reality of segregation. If you lived in an integrated neighborhood and/or attended an integrated school, you had to make sense of the segregation in most of society outside theschool, especially in segments considered of higher value or quality. It is also highly likely that there was still racial separation within the school.
In the second area was [still got to remind myself]
In the 3rd area (chapter 7) was this quote which I liked because it reminded me about how I explain that words mean different things based on time, place, community, and bodies, and this felt like that except explaining conflict instead of consensus.
- Anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is very useful for understanding white fragility—the predictability of the white response to having our racial positions challenged. According to Bourdieu, habitus is the result of socialization, the repetitive practices of actors and their interactions with each other and with the rest of their social environment. Because it is repetitive, our socialization produces and reproduces thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions. Thus, habitus can be thought of as a person’s familiar ways of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the social cues around him or her.
- There are three key aspects of Bourdieu’s theory that are relevant to white fragility: field, habitus, and capital. - Field is the specific social context the person is in—a party, the workplace, or a school. If we take a school as an example, there is the macro field of school as a whole, and within the school are micro fields—the teacher’s lounge, the staff room, the classroom, the playground, the principal’s office, the nurses’ office, the janitor’s supply room, and so on.
- Capital is the social value people hold in a particular field; how they perceive themselves and are perceived by others in terms of their power or status. For example, compare the capital of a teacher and a student, a teacher and a principal, a middle-class student and a student on free or reduced lunch, an English language learner and a native English speaker, a popular girl and an unpopular one, a custodian and a receptionist, a kindergarten teacher and a sixth-grade teacher, and so on.
- Capital can shift with the field, for example, when the custodian comes “upstairs” to speak to the receptionist—the custodian in work clothes and the receptionist in business attire—the office worker has more capital than does the maintenance person. But when the receptionist goes “down” to the supply room, which the custodian controls, to request more whiteboard markers, those power lines shift; this is the domain of the custodian, who can fulfill the request quickly or can make the transaction difficult. Notice how race, class, and gender will also be at play in negotiations of power. The custodian is most likely to be male, and the receptionist female; the custodian more likely a person of color and the receptionist more likely white. These complex and intersecting layers of capital are being negotiated automatically.
- Habitus includes a person’s internalized awareness of his or her status, as well as responses to the status of others. In every field, people are (often unconsciously) vying for power, and each field will have rules of the game. Habitus will depend on the power position the person occupies in the social structure. Returning to the school example, there will be different rules to gain power at the reception desk versus the custodian’s supply room. These rules do not have to be thought about consciously—I automatically shift into them as I enter each field. If I don’t follow these rules, I will be pushed out of that field through various means. Some of these rules are explicitly taught to us, while others are unwritten and learned by picking up consistent social patterns.
In the fourth area [still got to remind myself]
---
there was 1 squick i had, because it reminded me of a public confrontation 2 transphobic inclusion department staff at a PWI high school were saying to be by comparing legal transition to wanting to be a foreign diplomat (something to do with needing to be born somewhere else or something)
"As a culture, we don’t claim that gender roles and gender conditioning disappear the moment we love someone of the “opposite” gender. I identify as a woman and am married to someone who identifies as a man, yet I would never say, “Because I am married to a man, I have a gender-free life.” We understand that gender is a very deep social construct, that we have different experiences depending on our gender roles, assignments, and expressions, and that we will wrestle with these differences throughout the life of our relationship. Yet when the topic is race, we claim that it is completely inoperative if there is any level of fond regard. In an even more ludicrous form of reality, we even go as far as to claim that racial conditioning disappears if we can calmly walk by people of color on the streets of large cities"
and that was the juxtaposition of heterosexual marriage with interracial marriage, since race is closer to nationality... which fuels or is fueled by people buying into men are from mars women are from venus boys & girls can't be friends... like, in the case of gender it's like we're all earthlings but then we get forced onto rockets around the ages of 7-8 that take us to mars or venus... it might have made sense in the pre-coed era,
i say this because while the book & the author seem pro-trans, it uses the word socialization which i've mainly only heard get used by terfs/foundational oppressionists, and anticommunists/fascists. it seems that it refers to how people get conditioned to use certain frameworks for navigating the world. while i get the idea that a tomato seed & a tomato fruit are both tomatos, and that this applies to say anti-revisionism & gentrification too, and so the racism is smog & the ass is separate from the throne (karen was seen as a white individual). but yeah, it was rough. it reminds me about how people can be callous with family imagery since families are sites of (child) (sex) abuse & femicide.
the book was still good though.
---
I listened to the audiobook. there was a lot of lists read off, so maybe the print edition has something to faciliate that?
So there's 4 bits of this book that I would consider highlights. I divided this book into quarters because it was a 6 hour audiobook that I listened to at double speed.
Somewhere in the 1st quarter (turns out it's chapter 2) she points out that white people dominate job fields in the 80%+ & 90%+. Like to be blunt, I knew that in post-apartheid South Africa, white people still had like 90% of the shit even though they only made up of 10% of the population, but that systemic domination explains the various KKK vibes I'd get.
Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the
ten richest in the world)
US Congress: 90 percent white
US governors: 96 percent white
Top military advisers: 100 percent white
President and vice president: 100 percent white
US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white
Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white
People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white
People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white
People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white
People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white
People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time,
worldwide: 95 percent white
Teachers: 82 percent white
Full-time college professors: 84 percent white
Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white
Also this thing, among other passages towards the 3rd quarter of the book also showed the horror of the racism. I had a black friend in pre-school & apparently I process not seeing her after that is something my body has processes as a missing persons case.
- To get a sense of the white racial frame below the surface of your conscious awareness, think back to the earliest time that you were aware that people from racial groups other than your own existed. People of color recall a sense of always having been aware, while most white people recall being aware by at least age five.
- [...]
- If you lived and went to school in racial segregation as most people in the United States do, you had to make sense of the incongruity between the claim that everyone was equal and the lived reality of segregation. If you lived in an integrated neighborhood and/or attended an integrated school, you had to make sense of the segregation in most of society outside theschool, especially in segments considered of higher value or quality. It is also highly likely that there was still racial separation within the school.
In the second area was [still got to remind myself]
In the 3rd area (chapter 7) was this quote which I liked because it reminded me about how I explain that words mean different things based on time, place, community, and bodies, and this felt like that except explaining conflict instead of consensus.
- Anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is very useful for understanding white fragility—the predictability of the white response to having our racial positions challenged. According to Bourdieu, habitus is the result of socialization, the repetitive practices of actors and their interactions with each other and with the rest of their social environment. Because it is repetitive, our socialization produces and reproduces thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions. Thus, habitus can be thought of as a person’s familiar ways of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the social cues around him or her.
- There are three key aspects of Bourdieu’s theory that are relevant to white fragility: field, habitus, and capital. - Field is the specific social context the person is in—a party, the workplace, or a school. If we take a school as an example, there is the macro field of school as a whole, and within the school are micro fields—the teacher’s lounge, the staff room, the classroom, the playground, the principal’s office, the nurses’ office, the janitor’s supply room, and so on.
- Capital is the social value people hold in a particular field; how they perceive themselves and are perceived by others in terms of their power or status. For example, compare the capital of a teacher and a student, a teacher and a principal, a middle-class student and a student on free or reduced lunch, an English language learner and a native English speaker, a popular girl and an unpopular one, a custodian and a receptionist, a kindergarten teacher and a sixth-grade teacher, and so on.
- Capital can shift with the field, for example, when the custodian comes “upstairs” to speak to the receptionist—the custodian in work clothes and the receptionist in business attire—the office worker has more capital than does the maintenance person. But when the receptionist goes “down” to the supply room, which the custodian controls, to request more whiteboard markers, those power lines shift; this is the domain of the custodian, who can fulfill the request quickly or can make the transaction difficult. Notice how race, class, and gender will also be at play in negotiations of power. The custodian is most likely to be male, and the receptionist female; the custodian more likely a person of color and the receptionist more likely white. These complex and intersecting layers of capital are being negotiated automatically.
- Habitus includes a person’s internalized awareness of his or her status, as well as responses to the status of others. In every field, people are (often unconsciously) vying for power, and each field will have rules of the game. Habitus will depend on the power position the person occupies in the social structure. Returning to the school example, there will be different rules to gain power at the reception desk versus the custodian’s supply room. These rules do not have to be thought about consciously—I automatically shift into them as I enter each field. If I don’t follow these rules, I will be pushed out of that field through various means. Some of these rules are explicitly taught to us, while others are unwritten and learned by picking up consistent social patterns.
In the fourth area [still got to remind myself]
---
there was 1 squick i had, because it reminded me of a public confrontation 2 transphobic inclusion department staff at a PWI high school were saying to be by comparing legal transition to wanting to be a foreign diplomat (something to do with needing to be born somewhere else or something)
"As a culture, we don’t claim that gender roles and gender conditioning disappear the moment we love someone of the “opposite” gender. I identify as a woman and am married to someone who identifies as a man, yet I would never say, “Because I am married to a man, I have a gender-free life.” We understand that gender is a very deep social construct, that we have different experiences depending on our gender roles, assignments, and expressions, and that we will wrestle with these differences throughout the life of our relationship. Yet when the topic is race, we claim that it is completely inoperative if there is any level of fond regard. In an even more ludicrous form of reality, we even go as far as to claim that racial conditioning disappears if we can calmly walk by people of color on the streets of large cities"
and that was the juxtaposition of heterosexual marriage with interracial marriage, since race is closer to nationality... which fuels or is fueled by people buying into men are from mars women are from venus boys & girls can't be friends... like, in the case of gender it's like we're all earthlings but then we get forced onto rockets around the ages of 7-8 that take us to mars or venus... it might have made sense in the pre-coed era,
i say this because while the book & the author seem pro-trans, it uses the word socialization which i've mainly only heard get used by terfs/foundational oppressionists, and anticommunists/fascists. it seems that it refers to how people get conditioned to use certain frameworks for navigating the world. while i get the idea that a tomato seed & a tomato fruit are both tomatos, and that this applies to say anti-revisionism & gentrification too, and so the racism is smog & the ass is separate from the throne (karen was seen as a white individual). but yeah, it was rough. it reminds me about how people can be callous with family imagery since families are sites of (child) (sex) abuse & femicide.
the book was still good though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Violence, and Racism
caterpillar's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Racial slurs
alexvb's review against another edition
challenging
fast-paced
4.0
I enjoyed listening (via audiobook) to this, and it's sad that a 4 year old book with stats from 5-6 years ago is still very, very relevant -- meaning almost nothing in the world and our society has changed much within that time.
This feels like a good introduction rather than an indepth view and discussion of intregrated, institutionalised and societal racism within white people. It touched on how most of us (white people) cannot handle being called racist and refusing to reflex, apologise and learn. The book poses a lot of questions and asks us (white people) to question why the norm is the norm, and to become more conscious in our questioning about society. But there is a lot of repetition with whole lines repeated again and again - though you could easily see this as repetition is what we need in order for us to start changing our way of thinking -, and some sections are just whole chunks of lists.
Unfortunately, about 25% through, the author (who is white) says the N word multiple times. Personally, even if you're quoting the word, I don't think white people should be saying it.
I would've liked a lot more information such as history, background, stats, and examples put in the book.
Some points/quotes I made note of:
"Children are taught it is taboo to openly talk about race, and pretend not to notice such aspects that defines them lesser than others. White people drop their voices mentioning another race."
"Racism is highly adaptive."
""I don't see black."
"Then how do you see racism?"
She projected her reality onto him."
"Race talk always implies a racial "us" and "them"."
"White rage is Black advancement."
White people who get mad are the ones who've never been challenged to change their viewpoint and need a wake up call. Only then can we start to see things change.
"Girl,"
Being defensive and saying you did nothing wrong rather than asking why the student didn't like being referred to like that. White people need to ask and learn why what they said affected that person of colour, instead of dismissing them completely because one person said it was fine, or because the intention or meaning in general was harmless.
"Assume with good Intentions: emphasizing intentions over impact...over the impact of their behaviour. As long as there's no intention to cause harm, they need to let go of the hurt and move on."
This is what we do, but we need to stop doing this.
"Focus not on the messenger but on the message."
We should focus on why what was said is racist rather than focusing on the person who's defense is "oh I have black friends so I can't be racist". What they said was still harmful and racist.
"They don't share their pain with us because we can't handle it...in order to avoid white wrath."
Because too many white people self-centered, get angry, and defensive when confronted that what they did or said was actually harmful and racist, instead of reflecting, learning, and listening to the people or person who confronted them. Why should they bother when the person they've confronted is just going to not listen and make it all about them, taking the importance off what was said and what was actually wrong.
This feels like a good introduction rather than an indepth view and discussion of intregrated, institutionalised and societal racism within white people. It touched on how most of us (white people) cannot handle being called racist and refusing to reflex, apologise and learn. The book poses a lot of questions and asks us (white people) to question why the norm is the norm, and to become more conscious in our questioning about society. But there is a lot of repetition with whole lines repeated again and again - though you could easily see this as repetition is what we need in order for us to start changing our way of thinking -, and some sections are just whole chunks of lists.
Unfortunately, about 25% through, the author (who is white) says the N word multiple times. Personally, even if you're quoting the word, I don't think white people should be saying it.
I would've liked a lot more information such as history, background, stats, and examples put in the book.
Some points/quotes I made note of:
"Children are taught it is taboo to openly talk about race, and pretend not to notice such aspects that defines them lesser than others. White people drop their voices mentioning another race."
"Racism is highly adaptive."
""I don't see black."
"Then how do you see racism?"
She projected her reality onto him."
"Race talk always implies a racial "us" and "them"."
"White rage is Black advancement."
White people who get mad are the ones who've never been challenged to change their viewpoint and need a wake up call. Only then can we start to see things change.
"Girl,"
Being defensive and saying you did nothing wrong rather than asking why the student didn't like being referred to like that. White people need to ask and learn why what they said affected that person of colour, instead of dismissing them completely because one person said it was fine, or because the intention or meaning in general was harmless.
"Assume with good Intentions: emphasizing intentions over impact...over the impact of their behaviour. As long as there's no intention to cause harm, they need to let go of the hurt and move on."
This is what we do, but we need to stop doing this.
"Focus not on the messenger but on the message."
We should focus on why what was said is racist rather than focusing on the person who's defense is "oh I have black friends so I can't be racist". What they said was still harmful and racist.
"They don't share their pain with us because we can't handle it...in order to avoid white wrath."
Because too many white people self-centered, get angry, and defensive when confronted that what they did or said was actually harmful and racist, instead of reflecting, learning, and listening to the people or person who confronted them. Why should they bother when the person they've confronted is just going to not listen and make it all about them, taking the importance off what was said and what was actually wrong.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs
random19379's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Genocide, Racial slurs, Slavery, Sexism, and Classism
Minor: Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, Violence, and Gun violence
ok7a's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Minor: Racial slurs
meganpbennett's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
White Fragility is a short book that talks about the issues that well-meaning, left-leaning white people have when confronted with their racism. DiAngelo starts off by reiterating that all white people benefit from white supremacy and racist ideology, whether they, themselves, are actively racist. The author then goes on to give examples of the types of indirect racism, how they are used, and white people's reaction to being told that their behavior is racist. It's not comfortable reading by any means. It's interesting, and there were times where I wished the author would have expanded on several points, and I wished that there were more examples with explanations. I think that this book has the feel of a short, 'push-in,' workshop. It's a quick read, and it makes you think.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs
Moderate: Violence and Police brutality