White Fragility

Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

By: Robin DiAngelo

Narrated by: Amy Landon

Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's Summary

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. 

Anger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. 

These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. After, all, a racist is the worst thing a person can be, right? But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction. 

Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy. Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility. It is not enough to simply hold abstract progressive views and condemn the obvious racists on social media - change starts with us all at a practical, granular level, and it is time for all white people to take responsibility for relinquishing their own racial supremacy.

©2019 Robin DiAngelo (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

"With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'. In doing so, she moves our national discussions forward. This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change." (Claudia Rankine)

"By turns mordant and then inspirational, an argument that powerful forces and tragic histories stack the deck fully against racial justice alongside one that we need only to be clearer, try harder, and do better." (David Roediger, Los Angeles Review of Books)

"The value in White Fragility lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance." (Katy Waldman, New Yorker) 

Important read, but reader is robotic

White Fragility is an important read for every white person. Robin DiAngelo details why it is so hard for us to talk about racism without automatically going on the offensive. Particularly poignant is her discussion on how we view racism as good vs bad. Because we equate racism with bad people, any indication of racism feels like a huge moral failing on our part. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, she becomes quite preachy and assumes a tone of judgement of people who react to white fragility, which is a little off-putting.

The reader is supposedly a person but sounds like a robot. Most of the time she is understandable, but when she gets to long sentences – especially those with complex sentence structure and parenthesis like this one – the lack of appropriate expression is problematic. I recommend reading in 1.25x speed.

An awesome understanding of white fragility!

The book gave me as a person of color outside the USA, in a country where aparthied continues to linger, a good perspective and understanding of white fragility. A good read for all, the hopefully is much more than a good read for those who do.

A must read for all

A challenging yet encouraging articulation of the work to be done by us all !

An Important Message Wrapped in Troubling Ideology

On the one hand, the central message of this book: the importance of recognizing that racism is not restricted to those who would openly embrace it but is present, both consciously and unconsciously in everyone who is actively engaged in modern society regardless of the degree of diversity present in that society. It also points out that it is the ongoing responsibility of everyone to confront their own racism, wherever it manifests, and to seek outside aid to improve your own actions and perceptions.
What I take extreme exception to is the attempted redefinition of important terms: racism itself, and white supremacy. The book identifies itself as clearly belonging to the body of academic work that is characterized by the term Anti-Racism, and seeks to redefine racism to specifically refer to an institutional system that serves to maintain white authority. While I will readily acknowledge the need to define such a system as it exists in white-majority countries, it is entirely inappropriate to restrict the meaning of so useful a term, especially to restrict it to so narrow a definition that only has real significance in the United States. This Orwellian imposition of the redefinition of so important and useful a term on the entire anglophone world is entirely unacceptable, and frankly quite galling.
This book is myopically American, it considers no history prior to 1776, apart from one reference to the commencement of slavery in the British American colonies. It paints racism as an evil that can only be committed by white people with little real acknowledgement that the patterns presented as “racist” and supporting of “white supremacy” (by the definitions provided) are behaviours adopted by majority groups in most countries throughout the world, regardless of whether the majority group is white. This points to another key problem with the book: it sees race in only the broadest terms and fails to realise the deeply racist sentiments that can be expressed by one people, one ethnic group, to another even if they happen to share the same or similar skin colour. For example: the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1917. Both events were characterized by deep-seated racist hatred of the other group and resulted in the deaths of millions. By attempting redefine racism to meet the demands of modern diversity considerations in America, must we consign the remainder of the English-speaking world to the absence of this very necessary term to describe events that are unambiguously racist? I would also hasten to remind the reader, that the anglophone world is not restricted to the standard list of English-speaking countries noted in this book (the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), but also includes numerous countries where people of colour are the majority population such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Ghana. Should we apply the same ideologies in those contexts as well? The author would do well to realise that there is a much broader and more complex world beyond the United States, that doesn’t accept the laughably simple dichotomy of white vs black in race relations.

Must read

Any white person wishing to move towards being an anti-racist in action, should add this to their list of must reads. I acknowledge that this title is written by and profiting a white woman, it is also essential that you add a range of books by authors from black, indigenous and other people of colour on this topic. In combination with these other authors, I have found this book to be extremely beneficial in my work to become anti-racist.

good book. bad narration.

the narrator sounded like a does up robot trying to seduce you, but apart from that, great book. very important.

Encouraging differences

This is a very insightful book as it confirmed in my view how the widening of differences between whites and other races is widened by books similar to this one which promote the differences rather than the common grounds between races.

Crude assumptions with little empirical research

I am searching ways I can increase my awareness of the global issue of racism, and although this book enabled me to see certain emotions and discomfort that I feel when engaging in a conversation about race, I feel the book is laced with over generalizations and crude assumptions with reference to very little empirical research referenced not to mentioned all the Kafka traps laid out. Robin DiAngelo leaves very little room for opposing arguments which make the book difficult to take seriously.

For those wishing to inform themselves on racism, give this ago but first ready up on Critical Race Theory and it’s problems.

Much love everyone.

Not the best voice actor, but book changed my life

The book to start on if you are white and unsure about what exactly is going on with race and racism

Not the best voice actor though. don't let that stop you from opening your world view though!

Very repetitive, very preachy, poorly evidenced

There are definitely some thought-provoking bits to this book. I am glad I read it. But....

1) It is very repetitive. By the end I was thinking - 'yes, you've said this 10 times already'.
2) Most of the book rests on nothing more than anecdote from the author's facilitation of classes. Good quality evidence is the exception rather than the norm.
3) The tone is very preachy.
4) The author redefines words (like 'racism' and 'white supremacist') away from their common English usage to a meaning that fits and supports the authors preferred theory. She then complains that the people in classes she facilitates use the normal/traditional use of these terms rather than her preferred novel definition.

Pseudoscientific and un-constructive

The book is underpinned with the important idea that racial prejudice runs deep and is manifested in many ways beyond the most obvious. It follows that we should all make an effort to understand those more subtle systems and do what we can to step away from them. My hope was that DiAngelo would help shed light on those systems in more detail and offer some substantiated ideas about how to progress. Instead, the focus of the book is crafting an absurd kafka trap to dismantle all objection to an ideology. Simply, any disagreement with her theory on racism is proof of racism. She doesn't offer meaningful lessons or solutions, in fact, she goes as far as to suggest that focussing on solutions is in fact racist. If you want to know how to win arguments in bad faith and discredit anyone who disagrees, you might get something from this book. If you want to broaden your understanding of racial prejudice and learn about solutions, look elsewhere.

Awful narration

Really struggling to follow the very dull robotic narration, don't bother with the audio book, buy a physical copy

6.5 hour workshop commercial

Meh.

Summary. Unfalsifiable argument. All whites are racist...walk the tight rope between being a white saviour and an ally...be-less-white.

Emporer's new clothes argument...if you dont agree you must be stupid/racist. Okay...very logical...

Looking forward to Candace Owen's book Blackout for hopefully a different perspective.

The narration is excruciating!

I have not listened to this book as the pace and tone of the narration jars so much I am going to have to buy the written version. The paper version was not available which was why I bought this. Don't bother!

Don't waste your time or money!!

I found it very disappointing after reading all the positive reviews, poor content and continually repetitive of the same points and references. Finished the book to see if would get any better but sadly not.

There must be better books that cover this issue..

Awful voice

The voice sounds like an AI voice reading a pdf document... sorry I bought it, should have bought the hard copy...

Robin DiAngelo= Klu klux Klan member?

I don't know if this book is intended just to provoke a race war or just to make her rich. She's put herself out there as the saviour of all black people even though they haven't asked her to. I imagine that anyone of ANY colour would really want her to shut up speaking for them. She sees the world in race tinted glasses and if you disagree with her she has a series of ready made answers as to why you are a white supremacist racist. If you're white you are guilty of the entire history of slavery - if you're black you're down trodden and always the underdog. She has a real problem that is really outdated. White, black, oriental mixed race we all get on with our tough lives. we don't need this negative old lady with a guilt complex telling us to look at the world from one negative angle and feel like killing one another for what nobody born today has any responsibility for. We are here together whatever happened in the past. You are obviously a very intelligent person, you could have used your intellect to write something more positive and less blinkered!

The worst kind of pseudo-science

The author starts with a number of preconceptions to under pin her later narrative, these preconceptions have been disproved by numerous studies, therefore all that follows is just her opinion at best and pseudo-science at worse.
The concept of socialization, the cornerstone of her narrative, which she states as fact is still contested and there is a wealth of evidence refuting her position. Her disdained for individuality and support for the group are evidence of her postmodern Marxist world view.
The current call for all white people to read this book so as to address our unconscious bias will for the more enlighten readers serve only as more evidence of the moral corruption of the modern left.
Finally, it should be pointed out that the author benefits financially from teaching about unconscious biases to corporates across America a phenomenon that she alone identified and in this book attempts to justify. In this she embodies all that is good about the capitalism system that her postmodern Marxist world view seeks to destroy.

White Fragility - Paradigm Shift

This book is so important! It has given me a better understanding of how and why we are where we are when dealing with and discussing the impact of racism and white supremacy.

As an African man working in corporate settings that are predominantly white, I feel more equipped to discuss race-related topics with friends, colleagues and clients of all races.

The learning has just begun and I have a long and hard road ahead of me but at least books like this can act as a compass to help guide the way and promote continual learning.