Highlights

  • an agreed-on myth that has empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence. (Location 146)
  • whiteness goes even one better: it is a category of identity that is most useful when its very existence is denied. (Location 147)
  • All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics: women’s suffrage, the American with Disabilities Act, Title 9, federal recognition of same-sex marriage. A key issue in the 2016 presidential election was the white working class. These are all manifestations of identity politics. (Location 200)
  • Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; (Location 205)
  • Naming who has access and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice. (Location 209)
  • This book is unapologetically rooted in identity politics. (Location 210)
  • “passing”—being perceived as white—will (Location 238)
  • I began to see what I think of as the pillars of whiteness—the unexamined beliefs that prop up our racial responses. I could see the power of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism allowed white people (Location 293)
  • we are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts committed by individual people, rather than as a complex, interconnected system. (Location 295)
  • the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand (Location 304)
  • If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth. (Location 306)
  • I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of (Location 315)
  • White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived. (Location 317)
  • will explain the phenomenon of white fragility, how we develop it, how it protects racial inequality, and what we might do about it. (Location 327)
  • WE DON’T SEE OURSELVES IN RACIAL TERMS (Location 331)
  • My experience is not a universal human experience. It is a particularly white experience in a society in which race matters profoundly; a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race. (Location 333)
  • OUR OPINIONS ARE UNINFORMED (Location 339)
  • our simplistic definition of racism—as intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals—engenders a confidence that we are not part of the problem and that our learning is thus complete. (Location 359)
  • WE DON’T UNDERSTAND SOCIALIZATION (Location 364)
  • A significant aspect of the white script derives from our seeing ourselves as both objective and unique. (Location 367)
  • exploring these cultural frameworks can be particularly challenging in Western culture precisely because of two key Western ideologies: individualism and objectivity. Briefly, individualism holds that we are each unique and stand apart from others, even those within our social groups. Objectivity tells us that it is possible to be free of all bias. (Location 370)
  • there is a vast difference between what we verbally tell our children and all the other ways we train them into the racial norms of our culture. (Location 402)
  • breaking a cardinal rule of individualism—I am generalizing. (Location 403)
  • Rather than use what you see as unique about yourself as an exemption from further examination, a more fruitful approach would be to ask yourself, “I am white and I have had X experience. How did X shape me as a result of also being white?” (Location 425)
  • Setting aside your sense of uniqueness is a critical skill that will allow you to see the big picture of the society in which we live; individualism will not. (Location 427)
  • WE HAVE A SIMPLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF RACISM (Location 430)
  • Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true? How does this lens change my understanding of racial dynamics? How can my unease help reveal the unexamined assumptions I have been making? Is (Location 443)
  • CHAPTER 2 RACISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY (Location 453)
  • race, like gender, is socially constructed. (Location 457)
  • Under the skin, there is no true biological race. (Location 459)
  • The external characteristics that we use to define race are unreliable indicators of genetic variation between any two people.2 (Location 459)
  • SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE IN THE UNITED STATES (Location 463)
  • enslaved people) (Location 469)
  • enormous economic interests in justifying enslavement and colonization. Race science was driven by these social and economic interests, (Location 473)
  • Illustrating the power of our questions to shape the knowledge we validate, these scientists didn’t ask, “Are blacks (and others) inferior?” They asked, “Why are blacks (and others) inferior?” In less than a century, Jefferson’s suggestion of racial difference became commonly accepted scientific “fact.”5 (Location 476)
  • The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment; belief in racial inferiority is not what triggered unequal treatment. (Location 478)
  • Exploitation came first, and then the ideology of unequal races to justify this exploitation followed. (Location 481)
  • Kendi goes on to argue that if we truly believe that all humans are equal, then disparity in condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination. (Location 486)
  • THE PERCEPTION OF RACE (Location 487)
  • Race is an evolving social idea that was created to legitimize racial inequality and protect white advantage. (Location 488)
  • To understand racism, we need to first distinguish it from mere prejudice and discrimination. (Location 526)
  • Prejudice is pre-judgment about another person based on the social groups to which that person belongs. (Location 526)
  • Discrimination is action based on prejudice. These actions include ignoring, exclusion, threats, ridicule, slander, and violence. (Location 537)
  • When a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-images of individual actors. (Location 545)
  • “Racism is a structure, not an event.” (Location 547)
  • The racial ideology that circulates in the United States rationalizes racial hierarchies as the outcome of a natural order resulting from either genetics or individual effort or talent. Those (Location 565)
  • metaphor of a birdcage to describe the interlocking forces of oppression.16 If (Location 589)
  • you stand close to a birdcage and press your face against the wires, your perception of the bars will disappear and you will have an almost unobstructed view of the bird. (Location 590)
  • The birdcage metaphor helps us understand why racism can be so hard to see and recognize: we have a limited view. (Location 598)
  • Individual whites may be “against” racism, but they still benefit from a system that privileges whites as a group. (Location 603)
  • racism as “a system of advantage based on race.” (Location 604)
  • These advantages are referred to as white privilege, a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context (Location 605)
  • WHITENESS AS A POSITION OF STATUS (Location 611)
  • Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm. (Location 625)
  • The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. (Location 637)
  • WHITE SUPREMACY (Location 671)
  • Mills describes white supremacy as “the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today.” (Location 693)
  • Mills makes two points that are critical to our understanding of white fragility. First, white supremacy is never acknowledged. Second, we cannot study any sociopolitical system without addressing how that system is mediated by race. (Location 697)
  • [W]hite supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. (Location 704)
  • “My whole talk was the fact that you could run as Republicans, and say things like we need to shut down immigration, we need to fight affirmative action, we need to end globalism, and you could win these positions, maybe as long as you didn’t get outed as a white nationalist and get all the controversy that comes along with it.”28 (Location 747)
  • White supremacy is more than the idea that whites are superior to people of color; it is the deeper premise that supports this idea—the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm. (Location 763)
  • THE WHITE RACIAL FRAME (Location 769)
  • describe how whites circulate and reinforce racial messages that position whites as superior. (Location 770)
  • First, children learn that it is taboo to openly talk about race. Second, they learn that people should pretend not to notice undesirable aspects that define some people as less valuable than others (a large birthmark on someone’s face, a person using a wheelchair). (Location 837)
  • CHAPTER 3 RACISM AFTER THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (Location 843)
  • New racism is a term coined by film professor Martin Barker to capture the ways in which racism has adapted over time so that modern norms, policies, and practices result in similar racial outcomes as those in the past, while not appearing to be explicitly racist. (Location 850)
  • He says that though virtually no one claims to be racist anymore, racism still exists. How is that possible? Racism can still exist because it is highly adaptive. (Location 854)
  • racism has adapted over time to continue to produce racial disparity while it exempts virtually all white people from any involvement in, or benefit from, racism. (Location 859)
  • COLOR-BLIND RACISM (Location 869)
  • According to this ideology, if we pretend not to notice race, then there can be no racism. (Location 871)
  • a common response in the name of color blindness is to declare that an individual who says that race matters is the one who is racist. In other words, it is racist to acknowledge race. (Location 884)
  • Racial bias is largely unconscious, and herein lies the deepest challenge—the defensiveness that ensues upon any suggestion of racial bias. (Location 899)
  • This defensiveness is rooted in the false but widespread belief that racial discrimination can only be intentional. Our lack of understanding about implicit bias leads to aversive racism. (Location 909)
  • AVERSIVE RACISM (Location 911)
  • a manifestation of racism that well-intentioned people who see themselves as educated and progressive are more likely to exhibit. (Location 911)
  • aversive racists enact racism in ways that allow them to maintain a positive self-image (Location 914)
  • Rationalizing that our workplaces are virtually all white because people of color just don’t apply (Location 917)
  • Avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded terms such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighborhoods (Location 919)
  • not naming race provided plausible deniability. (Location 931)
  • This is a classic example of aversive racism: holding deep racial disdain that surfaces in daily discourse but not being able to admit it because the disdain conflicts with our self-image and professed beliefs. (Location 944)
  • aversive racism only protects racism, because we can’t challenge our racial filters if we can’t consider the possibility that we have them. (Location 976)
  • CULTURAL RACISM (Location 979)
  • white children develop a sense of white superiority as early as preschool. (Location 980)
  • The majority of incidents occurred in what the researchers describe as the backstage—in all-white company. Further, they found that whites involved in these incidents most often played predictable roles. Typically, there was a protagonist who initiated the racist act, a cheerleader who encouraged it through laughter or agreement, the spectators who stood in silence, and (very rarely) a dissenter who objected. Virtually all dissenters were subjected to a form of peer pressure in which they were told that it was only a joke and that they should lighten up. (Location 1008)
  • Talking about race and racism in general terms such as white people is constructive for whites because it interrupts individualism. (Location 1621)
  • White flight has been triggered when a formerly white neighborhood reaches 7 percent black, and in neighborhoods with more than a few black families, white housing demand tends to disappear.5 (That is, the demand disappears unless white people need that housing because of unaffordable home prices in other neighborhoods. In that case, black people are pushed out as gentrification increases. Brooklyn, Harlem, Oakland, and Seattle are prime examples.) (Location 1673)
  • We see anti-black sentiment in how quickly images of brutality toward black children (let alone black adults) are justified by the white assumption that it must have been deserved. (Location 1680)
  • When ideologies such as color blindness, meritocracy, and individualism are challenged, intense emotional reactions are common. (Location 1791)
  • have discussed several reasons why (Location 1792)
  • whites are so defensive about the suggestion that we benefit from, and are complicit in, a racist system: • Social taboos against talking openly about race • The racist = bad / not racist = good binary • Fear and resentment toward people of color • Our delusion that we are objective individuals • Our guilty knowledge that there is more going on than we can or will admit to • Deep investment in a system that benefits us and that we have been conditioned to see as fair • Internalized superiority and sense of a right to rule • A deep cultural legacy of anti-black sentiment (Location 1792)
  • But even in this arena, not all multicultural courses or training programs talk directly about racism, much less address white privilege. It is far more the norm for these courses and programs to use racially coded (Location 1802)
  • such as “urban,” “inner city,” and “disadvantaged,” but rarely use “white” or “over-advantaged” or “privileged.” (Location 1804)
  • simultaneously reproducing the comfortable illusion that race and its problems are what “they” have, not us. (Location 1806)
  • Habitus includes a person’s internalized awareness of their status, as well as responses to the status of others. (Location 1835)
  • When there is disequilibrium in the habitus—when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital—we use strategies to regain our balance. (Location 1843)
  • “habitus is neither a result of free will, nor determined by structures, but created by a kind of interplay between the two over time: dispositions that are both shaped by past events and structures, and that shape current practices and structures and also, importantly, that condition our very perceptions of these.”4 In (Location 1845)
  • white fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress in the habitus becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. (Location 1850)
  • benign. CHAPTER 8 THE RESULT: WHITE FRAGILITY (Location 1894)
  • As in other Western nations, white children born in the United States inherit the moral predicament of living in a white supremacist society. Raised to experience their racially based advantages as fair and normal, white children receive little if any instruction regarding the predicament they face, let alone any guidance in how to resolve it. Therefore, they experience or learn about racial tension without understanding Euro-Americans’ historical responsibility for it and knowing virtually nothing about their contemporary roles in perpetuating it. (Location 1916)
  • white people’s moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity with it. (Location 1923)