Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo pub. Beacon Press In an early chapter of her 2018 bestseller White Fragility , American writer Robin DiAngelo describes a scene with which – allowing for cultural adjustments – you may be familiar. A white woman and her white child are in a grocery store. The child sees a black man and shouts, “Mommy, that man’s skin is black!” People, including the man, turn to stare. DiAngelo, who is white and has been running racial justice workshops for many years, asks: how do you imagine the mother would respond? Answer: with a finger to her mouth, saying “Shush!” End of discussion. White Fragility , subtitled “ Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism ”, talks about racism. DiAngelo states that in the United States “only white people are in the position to oppress people of color collectively”; that all white people, having benefited from a society shaped by white supremacy, are racist; and that confronting white people with this fact causes such anger and denial, any further conversation about race becomes impossible. White people are fragile. That’s why – and how – the status quo is preserved. The book’s foreword, by black writer Michael Eric Dyson, describes DiAngelo as “the new racial sheriff in town”. The tone is that of a joint workshop, or maybe a wagon train, in which DiAngelo is shepherding us white folk through tricky territory. It was an instant success. A phrase was coined. A nerve was touched. Some white people expressed their fragility in a noticeably robust manner online. Now she’s written a follow-up: Nice Racism , which is subtitled “ How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm ”. In White Fragility , nice liberals are occasionally called out. “Niceness will not get racism on the table and will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off,” she writes in her conclusion. In Nice Racism , she intensifies the argument. She’s more defensive; she takes potshots at critics. She’s less likely to give quarter to her white readers. (“I have very little patience for cautions about invoking white guilt. Imagine trying to get men to see, and take responsibility for, the system of patriarchy and being told not to be so direct about men’s role because it makes men feel bad.”) If you read it, and I highly recommend that you do, whatever shade of colour or opinion you are, be prepared to find yourself clambering out of the many potholes for which your upbringing didn’t prepare you. An example: about 100 pages into Nice Racism , I emailed Post Magazine ’s books editor enthusing about how interesting it was. On page 108, the error of my ways became apparent. (“Marveling over how interesting learning about racism is does not indicate that we have connected to our own role, much less the suffering we cause others.”) You have to be careful not to over-connect, however, because crying isn’t good either. DiAngelo has sections in both books about white women’s tears and how they trigger memories of black men being tortured and murdered because of white women’s distress. At the same time, you need to be careful not to be careful. DiAngelo suddenly realises how her black friends see her when she’s taking care: stiff, uncomfortable, uptight, reserved. Talking too much perpetuates racial harm; but so does being silent. At one point, among 20 A4 pages of notes (yes, virtue signalling), I scribbled, “You can’t win.” DiAngelo, also brought up Catholic, would recognise the sin of despair. What made me persist were the moments of wincing recognition – yes, I’ve thought being Irish gives me a pass; yes, my Western individualism feels slighted when I’m lumped into a white collective, not just by DiAngelo but on the Hong Kong census form; yes, I’ve sometimes believed that being a minority in a foreign country means I understand racism. DiAngelo had stepped into my head with a mirror but she also stood alongside, explaining her own mistakes, breast-beating in tandem and admitting that, as a white person, she’ll always be racist and she’s still learning. “Yes, it is hard but there is healing in the struggle,” she writes at the halfway stage. “For you to say to me, ‘That’s really interesting, I’m new to this’ – that’s great!” she explains during an enjoyable Zoom call from her Seattle home. She’s an enthusiastic and highly appealing presence; although the books relate frequent stories of seminars gone wrong (hurt feelings and misunderstandings seem to abound), you can understand why her workshops are so popular. “If you had a dialogue with a person of colour who said they’d had this trauma and you said, ‘That’s so interesting’ – that would be different. And that’s the nuance we have to go for. What is the context we have in saying this?” Nuance and context, however, tend to get lost in the shouty era in which we exist. DiAngelo likes to make linguistic distinctions – we should be kind, not nice; we should be thoughtful, not careful – but not everyone hears them. She introduced her concept of “white fragility” in the backwaters of the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy in 2011, and swimming into the rougher mainstream has been a shock. “I’m a bit stunned by how vicious and personal some of those attacks have been,” she says. “Believe it or not, they don’t hurt when they come from the right but they do when they come from the left.” Why dive in again? “I did wrestle with should I go away, should I be silent, but that would be against everything I’ve ever offered for white people.” And it’s not as if the topic has disappeared. She mentions George Floyd in Nice Racism , which she was writing when he was murdered in 2020, but as she says, “I don’t like that racial-controversy-of-the-week approach so I was having to balance that – I can’t not acknowledge it but I don’t want to centre it.” One thing that comes over in person, but is almost invisible in the books, is her sense of humour. She’s funny. That’s obviously hard to convey given her subject matter, but more of it is creeping in. Chapter six of Nice Racism , which addresses the spiritual awakening of white people with the help of, for example, the Magical Negro trope (think Morgan Freeman) and tribal rituals to which no actual tribal member is ever invited made me laugh out loud. It has useful applications for a reader in Asia. DiAngelo grins. “I had a little more snark in that chapter but I took it out.” She doesn’t want to go too far then. But with each publication she’s pushing harder at white people’s boundaries. To those who criticise her for apparently muscling in on black writers’ territory, she replies, “If you really understand my books you’re directed to those writers because you’re more open to them.” This is true. She’s good at culling memorable quotes from black writers: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, lesser-known academics. You may find some of them baffling – why does Erin Trent Johnson think a room full of white women is a “much more dangerous space” than a room full of white men? – but you’ll end up questioning your own assumptions and, perhaps to your surprise, travelling further. (After I’d finished groaning and note-taking, I began reading Reni Eddo-Lodge, British author of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race , a 2017 book in which I’d had exactly zero interest.) “I don’t want to sound arrogant or chastising,” says DiAngelo, sounding like an amiable sheriff. “But I’m trying to teach something, right? If I weave it in with ‘here’s how it looks to me ’, I think I can help.”