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" One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked. "

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" Like a nontechnical user trying to understand a technical problem, our racial illiteracy limits our ability to have meaningful conversations about race. "

Robin DiAngelo

Racial

Limits

Problem

" You have to be in accountable relationships across race. Accountable means that they're authentic, they're sustained, and that you do talk about racism, and you are able to be given feedback. "

" Most people, certainly faculty, believe that if they're for social justice, it's automatically integrated into whatever they do. "

" As part of my work, I teach, lead and participate in affinity groups, facilitate workshops, and mentor other whites on recognizing and interrupting racism in our lives. "

" Mainstream dictionary definitions reduce racism to racial prejudice and the personal actions that result. But this definition does little to explain how racial hierarchies are consistently reproduced. "

" As white people in this society, we are socialized from the time that we're born to see ourselves as superior, to see white people and things associated white people as superior. At the same time, I'm encouraged to never admit to that. I'm taught that racism is very bad and immoral. "

" White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives. "

" White fragility doesn't always manifest in overt ways; silence and withdrawal are also functions of fragility. "

" I have spent years studying what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet is deeply divided by race. "

" White fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. "

" Whites often respond defensively when linked to other whites as a group or 'accused' of collectively benefiting from racism, because as individuals, each white person is 'different' from any other white person and expects to be seen as such. "

" Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system. "

" Many of us actively working to interrupt racism continually hear complaints about the 'gotcha' culture of white anti-racism. There is a stereotype that we are looking for every incident we can find so we can spring out, point our fingers, and shout, 'You're a racist!' "

" Most whites live, grow, play, learn, love, work and die primarily in social and geographic racial segregation. Yet, our society does not teach us to see this as a loss. Pause for a moment and consider the magnitude of this message: We lose nothing of value by having no cross-racial relationships. "

" There is no human objectivity. "

Robin DiAngelo

Objectivity

Human

" The antidote to white fragility is ongoing and lifelong and includes sustained engagement, humility, and education. "

" White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. "

" Human beings can only make sense of the world through the lens they were socialized to make sense of it through. "

" One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in. "

" The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how. "

" We whites who position ourselves as liberal often opt to protect what we perceive as our moral reputationsrather than recognize or change our participation in systems of inequity and domination. "

" The default of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. I mean, that's what it does; that's what it's been doing for hundreds of years. "

" It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews. "

" While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group. "

" Until white people understand that racism is embedded in everything, including our consciousness and socialisation, then we cannot go forward. "

" If I have no idea how my race shapes me, I am probably not going to be open to any feedback about how your race shapes you. "

" Denying that race matters is irrational in the face of segregation and all of the other forms of obvious racial inequity in society... Maintaining this denial of reality takes tremendous emotional and psychic energy. "

" Most white people cannot answer the question, 'What does it mean to be white?' with any depth or complexity. "

" For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we're good, moral people, we can't be racist - we don't engage in those acts. "

" One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations. "