White Fragility Book Review - Aryan Sachdev

This book, White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, is about how the term “white fragility” is used and what it means in society. This genre is usually out of my comfort zone for reading, but I decided to read this because of the Black Lives Matter movement and other current events going on related to racism.

 To start off, white fragility is “the intense emotions, the defensive stance, and the argumentation white people experience, take and utilize when confronted with the topic of racism”. To put it short, it means that whenever the topic of racism is discussed around a caucasian person, they immediately get very defensive and flustered in comparison to a person of color. 

One example of white fragility in real life could be when the Black Lives Matter movement was taken by select caucasian people and made into “All Lives Matter”. This may not seem bad at first glance, but in truth, it means that they were drawing attention away from the injustices done to the black community. They were generalizing the problem of racism to encompass people who don’t even experience it on a daily basis. On a larger scale, white fragility can be seen in the travel ban on people from majority Muslim countries, showing that caucasian people develop anxiety at the thought of being the minority.

DiAngelo also writes about how white fragility has been seen in U.S. History by mentioning how racism was shaped during the American Civil Rights Era. Before this movement in the 1950s - 1960s, it was socially acceptable to be openly racist without any consequences. But after caucasian people were able to see people of color being attacked and harmfully treated on television, the social norm around racism was changed from indifferent to unacceptable. Of course, not everyone thought this way, but on the whole, this was the main beginning of “white fragility”. Since then, the term has evolved to match the standards of today’s community's ideals. One of the main reasons that white people have such a hard time talking about racism today is because of the idea of being a bad person. They unknowingly relate the idea of racism to being a horrible person, and they would never want to identify as that. In today’s day and age, white is still the universal “standard” skin color. You can see this in emojis, “skin tone” colors, fairer skin being more attractive, etc. This list goes on. 

Overall, I would rate this book a 5/5 for people who enjoy informational books about society. This book helped me see a lot of the reasons that some people can’t talk about racism like I, a person of color, can. The author does a great job of thoroughly describing everything she stated, and she made it interesting for the reader and made you want to keep reading. The book can get a little technical at points, but overall it’s pretty understandable.