White Fragility, Antiracism, Teaching, and Me

Amazon has sold out of antiracist books. Topping the bestseller lists are two titles I read this past semester before the pandemic hit: Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (2018) and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist (2019).

This post is my response to the pairing. But first, what to make of the book news?

What does it mean that antiracist books are bestsellers?

My initial response was delight and hope. Lots of people are reading important books! Because of the pandemic, we’ll have time to reflect on them and let them shape our hearts, minds, and actions. My optimism was furthered when I read my friend Jennifer Hemmingsen’s Seattle Times editorial about BLM protests in the suburbs.

But at the same time, I felt dismayed that Amazon is benefiting from COVID and racism.

Then I read an article that dealt an even harsher blow to my optimism, Tre Johnson’s Washington  Post article “When Black People Are In Pain, White People Just Join Book Clubs.” Even before encountering this piece, I had been hesitant to write a post about my antiracist reading. (My hesitancy stemmed from white fragility. I’m afraid of saying something wrong, and I’m afraid of looking like a privileged white woman who has time to blog while others are getting tear gassed.) After reading Johnson’s piece, which I recommend, I almost abandoned what I’d already drafted. But then what? No post about racism in the midst of urgent calls for racial justice? Because I’m afraid of looking like exactly what I am—a privileged white middle class woman whose life focuses on reading and writing?

Well, if that isn’t white fragility, I don’t know what is.

So… here are my thoughts on two important books.

DiAngelo offers a white take on Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (the subtitle of her book). Kendi presents a black take on how all people, regardless of race, can combat racism.

Together they offer a lifetime’s worth of food for thought. What follows are my initial nibbles: the reflections of a 56-year-old white middle class queer cis woman from Iowa.

What did I learn from DiAngelo and Kendi?

DiAngelo focuses on the inner work white people need to do while Kendi details the intersectional work we all need to do. He emphasizes the importance of antiracist policy.

Together, DiAngelo and Kendi taught me that I’m more complicit with racism than I once thought.

As someone who writes a blog called Midway, I was unsettled by one of Kendi’s main points: there is no midway, no middle ground, when it comes to racism. Of course I’ve always believed that it is flat-out wrong to endorse racist ideas and actions. And, maybe subconsciously, I’ve long known that silence and inaction are endorsement. But Kendi helped me see and accept this fact more clearly and consciously. For Kendi, there is no such thing as being not racist. Your actions or inactions either support racist policies or your actions combat them. You are either racist or antiracist.

DiAngelo’s book made me more receptive to Kendi’s message. Her book helped me understand why I found Kendi’s main point painful and difficult to accept.

Beyond The (Good/Bad) Binary

DiAngelo’s book also taught me that although there is no middle ground when it comes to being racist or antiracist, the middle ground is crucial when it comes to battling racism.

One of her main points is that in order to identify our own racism, we need to identify and disrupt “the good/bad binary”: the mistaken idea that only “bad people” can be racists. Resisting binaries is a key element of what I call midway thinking, so (happy news for me and my blog!) midway thinking can be an important strategy for challenging racism.

In Chapter 5, DiAngelo explains the origins of “the good/bad binary.” After the civil rights movement, our understanding of racism shrank: we came to see it as only “simple, isolated, extreme acts of prejudice” like the N-word scrawled on a wall or a KKK rally (71). This oversimplified view led to this binary:

racist = bad person / non-racist = good person.

More specifically, DiAngelo depicts the binary like this:

According to DiAngelo, the belief that only bad stupid people can be racist is itself a pillar of racism.

1. The binary prevents an accurate and full understanding of racism and its complexity. (We are all socialized into racism. It is usually not simple and easy to detect. It is often not driven by hate. It is often not intentional. It is a complex system of sometimes unexamined attitudes that lead to policies that hurt BIPOC.)
2. The good/bad binary enables most people to deny their own racism. It silences dialogue about race and racism. Nobody wants to be seen as stupid or hateful. So when we are called out on racist words or actions, we feel like our character is under attack. We leap to our own defense and refuse to listen. We are therefore unable to acknowledge—let alone examine or challenge—our own racism.  

Sadly, I believe that the polarization surrounding Trump has strengthened the good/bad binary. A racist now seems to equal a Trumper, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, climate change denier etc. It is now harder than ever—and more necessary—for white liberals and progressives to understand that we are racist.

In an excellent summary of DiAngelo’s work (and the work of other antiracist writers), Jon Greenberg suggests that white people adopt mantras that enable us to quit fleeing racism.

One mantra he suggests is, “I am racist.”

Points for brevity, but not so great out of context. Drawing on other parts of Greenberg’s article and a Vox article, I offer these mantras:

• All people, including good people, possess unconscious racist beliefs.
• I’m committed to unearthing and challenging my unconscious racist beliefs.
• It’s my responsibility to unearth and dismantle my unconscious racist beliefs (and other implicit biases).
• It’s my responsibility to discover how my implicit biases clash with my declared beliefs.

DiAngelo herself offers a question that could serve as a mantra: Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism?

Whatever the mantra, this work is not for the fragile or faint of heart. And beyond the good/bad binary, DiAngelo offers other reasons why most whites are too fragile to examine their own racism.

Some of it comes down to white privilege, which she calls resources: “self-worth, visibility, positive expectations, psychological freedom from the tether of race, freedom of movement, belonging, and a sense of entitlement to all of the above” (25).

But as she makes clear, these privileges come at a cost to BIPOC and to white people themselves.

Take, for instance, “freedom from the tether of race.” In an important way, this freedom grants white people huge advantages over people of color: more time and energy to spend on other issues and tasks. But it also contributes to our white fragility, making it hard for us to engage with issues related to race. It distorts our view of reality. It leads us to “expect racial comfort”; it reduces our “psychosocial stamina” (100-101).

As DiAngelo notes, many white people have been raised in racially insulated places. These places lack not only BIPOC, but also any acknowledgement of race and its importance. We are trained to believe what Ta-Nehisi Coates identifies as an insidious “dream”: we see ourselves as individuals who are not impacted by race, not other people’s and not our own. We have little practice thinking of ourselves as a race, as part of a collective or racial group, as part of history. We lack the skills and disposition to engage fruitfully with the real world. And all its people.

How am I going to acquire these skills? How am I going to relate DiAngelo’s book to my own life? How am I going to become an antiracist as Kendi defines it: “someone who is supporting antiracist policies or expressing antiracist ideas” (226)?

This cluster of questions feels overwhelming. But that feeling is a prime example of white fragility.

So I’m resisting it.

I’m making a start. I’m creating an outline of action steps. At the same time, I’m reminding myself that being an antiracist is not something you can check off a to-do list. It’s a lifelong project, a process that requires continual reflection and effort.

The outline is a two-parter.  The first part focuses on my inner work, and the second part focuses on my other work—especially my teaching. The first part emphasizes reflection, and the second part, action.

Inner Work

Resist my own white fragility and develop psycho-social stamina.

Reflect on these interrelated questions: How does white fragility fuel some of my unproductive habits? How does white fragility intersect with other elements of my socialization? In other words, how is my white fragility shored up by other elements of my upbringing—as a lifelong member of the middle class, as an Iowan, a woman, an academic?

• “Iowa nice” and “live and let live”
• perfectionism, fear of being wrong, fear of being critiqued, fear of claiming too much
• second-guessing, over-thinking, hedging, qualifying, incessant editing and excessive word-tinkering (I can’t afford to be all Strunk-and-White as our world falls apart!)
• playing small (Here is a weird irony. As Kendi aptly notes, racist ideas underestimate black people and overestimate white people (140). Yet I think it may be possible that some racist ideas and phenomenon—especially white fragility—underestimate some white people, or at least some capacities of some white people. See what I mean about the hedging?)

Resist my aversion to uncertainty and discomfort.

Read articles that will help me “learn to be good with discomfort” Leo Babauta, for instance, observes:

“One of the most important skills you can develop is being okay with some discomfort. The best things in life are often hard, and if you shy away from difficulty and discomfort, you’ll miss out. You’ll live a life of safety.
Learning is hard. Building something great is hard. Writing a book is hard. A marriage is hard. Running an ultramarathon is hard. All are amazing.”

I would add that being an antiracist is hard. And also amazing.

Act on my reading: every day lean into discomfort at least once. Do at least one uncomfortable thing (or take one risk) that moves me closer to my goals, serves the common good, or interrupts racism.

Find some friends to help me with the tasks above and below. Any takers?

Other Work: Teaching

Research and reflect on these questions: What makes a literature or writing class antiracist? A text? A curriculum?

Consider my current antiracist teaching practices so that I can build on them. (The most obvious and important one is including writings by authors of many races.)

Strengthen my three fall 2020 courses. (Unfortunately, I can make only small changes to my text selections because I was required to place my book order months ago.)

Writing and Social Issues

My composition course, Writing and Social Issues, is the course that needs the most improvement in terms of antiracism. I plan to read DiAngelo’s essay on white fragility to see if it would be an effective addition. I’m always looking for strategies to encourage students to think more complexly, so I would love to introduce them to her work on the good/bad binary.  Resisting binary thinking is an important skill not just for antiracism, but for most intellectual and emotional work.

I would also like to teach excerpts from Kendi’s book. Besides offering important ideas, his writing could serve as a model for types of writing, such as definition and blending narrative (autobiography) with exposition.

Both Kendi and DiAngelo—especially DiAngelo—write in an academic voice, so I could encourage my students to reflect on how their academic voice compares to the popular voice in two of the texts I already teach: Zach Wahls’ My Two Moms and Melissa Gates’ Moment of Lift. And clearly, I need to develop questions that will help my students consider the role of whiteness in these white-authored texts.

LGBTQ+ Literature

I’m pumped about teaching LGBTQ+ Literature for the second time. The first time I taught this core literature course in Fall 2018, ten students enrolled. This time, it’s full at twenty! I plan to once again teach Danez Smith’s first collection, [INSERT] BOY, and excerpts from his second, Don’t Call Us Dead, along with Christopher Soto’s wonderful anthology Queer Poets of Color. Jericho Brown has  a poem in the collection, but now that he just won the Pulitzer Prize, I want to include more of his work.

I also want to include a long-form work by a writer of color. The novels and memoirs I taught last time are all by white people:

• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (American lesbian)
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham (American gay man)
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer (American gay man)
• Man Alive by Thomas Page McBee (American trans man)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (British lesbian)

These superb texts worked well in my class, but maybe I could add Saeed Jones’ memoir How We Fight For Our Lives, which I’ve been wanting to read. Or Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize winning Girl, Woman, Other. If I add a text, I will, of course, need to drop one. Probably Winterson’s. Surprisingly, many students struggled with her biblical allusions, and not surprisingly, with her postmodern style.

(As I discuss some of this with my partner, Ben, he reminds me of this hard truth: when you add something to a course—or or to your life—you also usually need to subtract something.)

In my LGBTQ+ Literature course, I also want to relate the literature to more current events that relate to race:

• connections between the COVID pandemic and the AIDS crisis (consider teaching Alexander Chee’s recent NYT piece)
• Black Trans Lives Matter
• the longtime erasure of trans activists of color in the Stonewall uprising and Pride celebrations. (How I’d love to discover a short literary text about Marsha P. Johnson and/or Sylvia Rivera!)

Creative Writing

In Creative Writing (an introductory multi-genre course), I’ve long included a wide range of authors and styles, but even before reading DiAngelo and Kendi, I’d decided to add The Poet X, an award-winning novel-in-verse by Afro-Latina writer Elizabeth Acevedo. This text, about a young girl who becomes a slam poet, will enable my students to compare the written and spoken word and consider connections between narrative and poetry. Most important, it will enable them to reflect on the many purposes of creative writing. What role can creative writing play in our lives? Why does it matter?

I may also add resources related to race and to writing diversely:

• #ownvoices
• avoiding stereotypes
• dismantling the default white point of view.

In a creative writing class, the default white point of view references a (problematic) narrative technique, but in the world, it references our culture’s tendency to see white people as the norm. This tendency is a key element of white supremacy and racism. Dismantling the default white point of view may be the most important antiracist practice, at least for a teacher and writer. It’s also likely the area where I most need to improve.

But I need to bring this initial action plan to a close. Writing it has made me feel hopeful and energized, and I hope that reading it has done the same for you. I also hope that you’ll share your ideas with me and that some of you will join me in this work.