White Fragility Blog Response #4 Chapter 3

 

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Garrett McLeod

Professor Heather Stewart-Steele

ENGL-1303

28 February 2021

White Fragility Blog Response #4 – Chapter 3

            DiAngelo’s primary focus in this chapter is explaining the complexities of how racism has adapted to the new norms of the post-Civil Rights era, where it is not so culturally accepted to identify outrightly as a racist. There are three aspects of our society that she points out to be the main ways in which this adaptation has firmly established itself, the emergence of color-blind racism, spreading of aversive racism, and continuation of the same cultural racism that has existed since the founding of our country.

            Many do not realize that the vast majority of the White population at the time of the Civil Rights Movement, either did not support or usually just outwardly hated Martin Luther King Jr., but since then it has become a taboo to be against him in any shape and form. Not only that, but his very words have been appropriated to work against his very life mission. DiAngelo explains how King’s quote about judging a man by the content of his character and not the color of his skin, has been hijacked for the use of the status quo. This is the case because it is interpreted as meaning that if we ignore race then race will cease to exist, when in reality the racial status quo is what is supported when race is ignored in a country so deeply affected by it both past and

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present. In my own life I have come across the phenomenon of racist color-blindness. Where someone who claims to be color-blind and therefore not racist, when confronted with an issue connected to race will then turn the issue around like an act of mental jiu-jitsu, and say that you are in fact the racist for pointing out that race affects peoples lives in the first place. Color-blindness is a prime example of white fragility, because it allows one to ignore their racial biases, while at the same time justifying it to themselves as morally righteous even, because it is considered anti-racist action.

            Aversive racism is similar in that it helps one to maintain a positive self-image while perpetuating the same issues as everyone else. DiAngelo uses the example of a conversation based around moving to a black-neighborhood that is of a low socio-economic status. Because of how racism has held down African Americans from accumulating inter-generational wealth in myriad ways, it is the case that majority African American neighborhoods tend to be of a lower economic status, which coincides with crime no matter the race. So, this puts people who are unaware of that context, because it has served the status quo to not make this information mainstream, into a really difficult position when they see the undeniable fact that African American neighborhoods tend to have more crime. It is truly insidious, because well-meaning people who do not know the whole context because of propaganda, or will not accept it because of their white fragility, are left with cognitive dissonance. Because they believe simultaneously that any individual can get ahead in our society, and that African Americans are not lesser than them, but then African American individuals still tend to be of a lower socio-economic status, so what are they supposed to make of all this?