White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo on Nice Racism, her follow-up to the 2018 bestseller, the death of George Floyd and the vicious attacks directed at her
- The Seattle-based author says she was shocked by the vicious abuse she received for her first book, but still she resolved to dive right back into white racism
- Read ‘Nice Racism’ and it brings moments of wincing recognition. ‘I’m trying to teach something,’ she says, and thinks it helps if she offers her perspective
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.”)