{"id":1315844,"date":"2019-10-18T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/cepeda-column-white-fragility-cripples-americas-ability-to-heal-its-racism\/"},"modified":"2019-10-18T22:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T04:28:00","slug":"cepeda-column-white-fragility-cripples-americas-ability-to-heal-its-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/cepeda-column-white-fragility-cripples-americas-ability-to-heal-its-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Cepeda column: White fragility cripples America\u2019s ability to heal its racism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

CHICAGO \u2014 After a recent reading of Robin J. DiAngelo\u2019s urgently needed book \u201cWhite Fragility: Why It\u2019s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,\u201d I vowed to wait for a clear-cut example of white fragility before writing about it.<\/p>\n

My wait lasted all of two weeks. That\u2019s when white students at Georgia Southern University burned the books of a different author who discussed the dangers of white privilege.<\/p>\n

The crux of DiAngelo\u2019s book is that discussing white racism is threatening to white people, because the topic has typically been broached in terms of how racism impacts people of color.<\/p>\n

Instead, DiAngelo, a white social-justice professor at Washington University, illustrates all the ways in which the system of racism undergirds, enhances and benefits every aspect of whites\u2019 lives without them even realizing it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an understandably jarring, infuriating, painful and necessary revelation \u2014 even for people of color who are light-skinned enough to \u201cpass\u201d for white in many situations.<\/p>\n

DiAngelo explains that the discomfort white people feel when they recognize their economic and social advantages is the key to dismantling the system of white supremacy over brown and black people that our country\u2019s economy was founded on.<\/p>\n

Because racism is often couched in terms of good morals vs. bad morals \u2014 i.e., nice people can\u2019t be racist \u2014 DiAngelo says that some whites \u201cperceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable \u2014 the mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear and guilt along with behaviors such as argumentation, silence and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Oct. 9, I was finishing Jennine Cap\u00f3 Crucet\u2019s haunting new collection of essays, \u201cMy Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education.\u201d On that same day, Cap\u00f3 Crucet, who is Latina, was essentially reliving \u2014 to an even worse degree \u2014 an anecdote she shared in her book about a white college student reacting negatively to a speech. In her book, Cap\u00f3 Crucet recounts speaking \u201cat a predominantly white college in the American South.\u201d The student first heckled the author, calling her racist, then burst into tears because she was so upset at the idea of preferential faculty-hiring practices for diversifying the college\u2019s teaching staff.<\/p>\n

Last week, after Cap\u00f3 Crucet gave a speech and discussed white privilege at Georgia Southern University\u2019s campus in Statesboro, students burned copies of her book.<\/p>\n

According to the school\u2019s student newspaper, a student asked the author during the question-and-answer section of the talk, \u201cWhat makes you believe that it\u2019s OK to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we\u2019re taught? I don\u2019t understand what the purpose of this was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cap\u00f3 Crucet reportedly responded, \u201cI came here because I was invited, and I talked about white privilege because it\u2019s a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hostile shouting ensued. After the talk ended, some people crowded outside the hotel where the university had put up Cap\u00f3 Crucet, so the author was moved to another location for her safety. Later, a video of white students giggling and cheering as copies of her book were fed into a fire gained traction on social media.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s scheduled speech at Georgia Southern\u2019s Savannah campus was subsequently canceled because the school, in a state where college students are allowed to carry concealed weapons on certain parts of campus, couldn\u2019t guarantee her safety.<\/p>\n

Cap\u00f3 Crucet lamented that her book began as \u201can act of love and an attempt at deeper understanding.\u201d But white fragility has derailed that attempt and reinforced the stress and fear that students of color on predominantly white campuses experience daily.<\/p>\n

Incidents like these breed a sense of despair in people of color who understand white fragility all too well from their constant interactions with it.<\/p>\n

Our only hope is that white allies, colleagues, friends and even family take the time to learn about white fragility \u2014 DiAngelo\u2019s book and Cap\u00f3 Crucet\u2019s books are excellent starting points \u2014 and confront their own reactions when faced with racism\u2019s realities.<\/p>\n

Until we all admit to ourselves that entrenched racism pervades nearly every aspect of our lives, we\u2019ll never get past just being angry that it exists at all.<\/p>\n

Esther Cepeda\u2019s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com<\/a>, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 After a recent reading of Robin J. DiAngelo\u2019s urgently needed book \u201cWhite Fragility: Why It\u2019s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,\u201d I vowed to wait for a clear-cut example of white fragility before writing about it. My wait lasted all of two weeks. That\u2019s when white students at Georgia Southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 17:32:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}