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A review by rachellarson2019
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
3.0
DNF
As a white person giving this book a negative review, I feel....racist.
This book is extremely repetitive and at just over half way through, I decided to shelve it. I think the author is trying to speak to systemic racism in the United States and why white people have such a knee jerk, self-protective reaction when they are talked to about racism. She defines racism not as acts that people commit, but rather the systemic racism that pervades our society and the water that we all swim in. Her solution appears to be to get every white person to verbally cop to being a racist even if they have not committed acts of prejudice against other people or adhere to white nationalist rhetoric and beliefs. I agree with her that systemic racism exists, that whites benefit from being white in our country, that we all have implicit bias within us, and that we should humbly listen to and believe POC when they talk about their experience living in the world. But her approach is to redefine accepted definitions of words and everything felt like a circular argument.
I felt very defeated listening to this book because it really felt like I was being beat over the head with "admit your racist!" while at the same time not being offered any way forward and a lot of contradictory advice.
There is a book review by mark that I read on goodreads and will quote here, but please go read the whole review as he is a POC, a diversity trainer, and goes through different quotes in the book that are helpful and that are problematic.
"...this book offers no way forward. it simply and repeatedly instructs its white readers on why they are racist and will always be racist. To "learn" this lesson is to parrot back what the author has told them... Dialogue and emotional responses from trainees are not just disdained, they are seen as pervasive symptoms of racism. A person can read this polemic and gain an understanding of white culpability today and throughout history. But it provides no impetus to move forward, to create actual change."
As a white person giving this book a negative review, I feel....racist.
This book is extremely repetitive and at just over half way through, I decided to shelve it. I think the author is trying to speak to systemic racism in the United States and why white people have such a knee jerk, self-protective reaction when they are talked to about racism. She defines racism not as acts that people commit, but rather the systemic racism that pervades our society and the water that we all swim in. Her solution appears to be to get every white person to verbally cop to being a racist even if they have not committed acts of prejudice against other people or adhere to white nationalist rhetoric and beliefs. I agree with her that systemic racism exists, that whites benefit from being white in our country, that we all have implicit bias within us, and that we should humbly listen to and believe POC when they talk about their experience living in the world. But her approach is to redefine accepted definitions of words and everything felt like a circular argument.
I felt very defeated listening to this book because it really felt like I was being beat over the head with "admit your racist!" while at the same time not being offered any way forward and a lot of contradictory advice.
There is a book review by mark that I read on goodreads and will quote here, but please go read the whole review as he is a POC, a diversity trainer, and goes through different quotes in the book that are helpful and that are problematic.
"...this book offers no way forward. it simply and repeatedly instructs its white readers on why they are racist and will always be racist. To "learn" this lesson is to parrot back what the author has told them... Dialogue and emotional responses from trainees are not just disdained, they are seen as pervasive symptoms of racism. A person can read this polemic and gain an understanding of white culpability today and throughout history. But it provides no impetus to move forward, to create actual change."