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White Fragility, Chapter Twelve

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In Chapter Twelve of White Fragility, Robin Diangelo titles it “Where Do We Go from Here?”. Based off that title and it being the last chapter of the novel, we can infer that Diangelo is going to recommend some ways we can mitigate white fragility or prevent future social and racial injustices. Diangelo begins the chapter with a real-world experience with a black person who was not fond of her comment/joke she made. It gives the reader a sort of interest that she herself has portrayed racism towards a person of color without realizing it at first. But she acknowledged her actions later when she thought about it and realized that it offended that person. But I like how she was able to sit down with that person of color she offended and talk with her about the issues that she had made, and resolve those issues by asking if there were any more problems between them to address. When I first read a part of the chapter, Diangelo mentions how white people come up to her and ask her what to ...
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White Fragility, Chapter Ten

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In Chapter Ten of White Fragility, Robin Diangelo addresses white fragility again, but this time, chronologically with steps of how the concept comes out to play. The author points out the fact that she has been working with white people for a long time and hosting workshops that she sees a continuous pattern at hand. She seems to be confident that she figured out the way of the whites when it comes to giving them feedback about racism and anything regarding race. “To not give [feedback] at all” is the claim she makes to not trigger white fragility (Diangelo 123). Therefore, she is making a statement that you cannot prevent white fragility if race is mentioned. Race is the trigger of white fragility, what causes the whites to be sensitive and react so defensively. So do not give them feedback when it comes to the topic. Then, Diangelo goes on to list more rules if someone plans to offer a white person feedback on racism. And she is very specific about it too, probably because she knows...
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White Fragility, Chapter Nine

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In Chapter Nine of White Fragility , Robin Diangelo outlines how white fragility comes to be. In doing so, she uses a plethora of real-life experiences that she saw fit to describe the concept of white fragility and how it plays out. I like how she begins the chapter with one of her experiences at a workplace. She points out how a man, when he once heard the term “white” for Diangelo’s workshops, no longer wanted to continue with the workshop at his workplace. I am really curious as to why he got offended by the term, because is white not the superior race? What is wrong with hearing that a workshop talks about white when majority of the workers are white? Diangelo goes on to describe more situations where white people do not really pay attention to minority races or where minorities feel their lives do not matter. Throughout all of her experiences, she sees a recurring pattern within a workplace that has a majority of white people that she wanted to point out. When Diangelo points out...
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White Fragility, Chapter Eight

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Chapter 8 of White Fragility by Robin Diangelo describes how white fragility comes about as a result of life experiences and what white people were taught at an early age. I believe this to be true as I do think that whatever you learn at an early age and how you were raised really affects how you will live when you grow older. What you were taught as a foundation and what you have seen from experience during your childhood greatly influences your opinions and decisions in the future. Because habits are hard to break, if you are exposed to certain things and see certain things at a young age, you may not be able to unsee it, and even sometimes children will follow in those footsteps. Not everybody was raised in a caring home or had a roof over their head, so for each individual, these experiences are different. But in this case, Diangelo compares these childhood experiences to race. She quotes Debian Marty, a professor of communications: “As in other Western nations, white children bo...
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White Fragility, Chapter Six

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In Chapter Six of White Fragility, the author Robin Diangelo makes the claim that every individual race of color has experienced their own kind of persecution that is different from the rest, and that no race will really understand what other races have experienced unless they have experienced the same thing. She makes the claim that black people and all people of color have a small amount of privileges, and that when a privilege is “given” to them, it should not be taken for granted. I agree with her claim. In a position for a job, the manager or supervisor is most likely going to choose the white person over the black person, even if the black person is more experienced and skilled. I also like how she mentions that each ethnic group in a race are not the same; they may be similar, but they each ethnicity itself is unique; I like how she confirms this comparing the Chinese and Japanese cultures. I agree when Diangelo says that the black race is the most hated race by the whites, an...
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White Fragility, Chapter Five

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In the fifth chapter of White Fragility, Robin Diangelo points out a very unique factor: the good/bad binary. The good/bad binary is not just specific to race. It is a broad idea that can be discussed in any moral situation; it relates to anything pertaining to judgment really. I like how Diangelo pointed out an instance from the past, when it was okay for white people to treat black people harshly: “… it was socially acceptable for white people to openly proclaim their belief in their racial superiority” (Diangelo, 71). This was before the Civil War; and during the Civil War, when white people saw the violence brought against blacks and said it was not okay to treat them that way, they saw it as immoral. They became the racists. The Southerners became the racists, because they were for slavery, while the Northerners were against it. What I am understanding from this piece of historical evidence is that things are okay to do or not okay to do based on what the white people said. When D...
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White Fragility, Chapter Four

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In the fourth chapter of White Fragility , Diangelo describes her own experiences as a white person and the privileges of white people. She compares the lives of white people to the lives of people of color, and how both sides of the race card prove different outcomes. She starts the chapter off by describing how she “belongs” in society because of her skin color and in part because of how she was raised by her parents. “If I were born in a hospital, regardless of the decade in which I was born, any hospital would be open to me because my parents were white” (51). I like how thereafter she describes the social hierarchy of white people compared to people of color. She writes that white people are given more opportunity and are treated better in almost any situation; the scenario she gave was the hospital. She claims that white people would receive better treatment and have more experienced healthcare workers attending to their needs than people of color would. Like I have mentioned bef...
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