White Fragility, Chapter Nine

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 that that one white person is acting a certain way or making people of color feel a certain way, that white person acts out of rage. Or that person gets really defensive. And she sees this a lot, but she tries to help them out by helping understand the situation better, but a lot of the times, Diangelo is unsuccessful because they are too stubborn to learn or do not really care much for the situation. They really just care for their self-image, and what people think or see of them. As a white person herself, she believes that she can help those white people understand racism better. But there will be times when they do not hear her because they are too busy trying to explain themselves when things go left when speaking about the topic. Diangelo states, “Of course, I am also white, which makes other white people much more receptive to the message. I am often amazed at what I can say to groups of primarily white people” (Diangelo 116). She can say things to the white people knowing that they are the same race. They will listen and engage more because most of the time, they are on the same page about things.

But at the same time, when things are pointed out pertaining to racism, many white people express certain emotions and have particular behaviors that are similar within their race. Towards the end of the chapter, Diangelo separates many common feelings, behaviors, and claims that are similar among the white population. Most of the feelings listed are feelings of defensiveness, like “attacked, guilty, scared, insulted, outraged” (119). Then whites will act a certain way: “avoiding, denying, emotionally withdrawing” (119). Therafter, they will make certain claims like “You don’t know me, I know people of color, That was not my intention, You’re playing the race card” (120). Many times, white people will say these things to defend their accidental insults towards people of color.