opinion
I’M AN ANTI-RACIST EDUCATOR WITH
A BACKGROUND IN WHITENESS
STUDIES AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS. I FACILITATE DISCUSSIONS
ON ISSUES OF RACIAL JUSTICE AND
INEQUALITY. I ALSO CONSIDER
MYSELF, UNAVOIDABLY, RACIST.
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When I say that I’m racist, what I mean is that
I was born into a racialised hierarchy that has
shaped my worldview, and from which I have
benefited. I was born white, and that has
meaning. In fact, the forces of racism were
shaping my future before I’d even been born.
For example, it could be predicted that my
mother and I would survive my birth, and
it can be predicted that I will live longer
than someone who is not white.
Being born white also meant that my passage
through life would be easier. I grew up in
poverty, and while I have certainly worked
hard to transcend it, my whiteness made it
more likely that my work was going to pay off.
I have faced obstacles, but the barrier of racism
was not one of them. So when I say that I was
born racist, it’s because I don’t believe it is
possible for a white person born into a society
such as America’s or Australia’s not to be.White people often react with anger when I say
these things; they just can’t see themselves as
being complicit with racism. They say things
like: “But I treat everyone equally regardless of
race,” citing niceness as a defence against racism.
But being friendly does not make you un-racist,
or exempt you from the forces of socialisation.
In our society, almost any representation of the
ideal human will be white – heroes and heroines;
Jesus and Mary; God – and part of growing up is
internalising these messages into racist ideas,
assumptions, and patterns of behaviour. There’s
good research to show that, by the age of four,
children born in the U.S. know that it’s better
to be white than black. We have all absorbed the
messages of white superiority from living in a
system that is racist, and we don’t get to pardon
ourselves from a racist worldview just because
we’d like to. Yet this is something white
people don’t like being told.In 2011 I coined the term ‘White Fragility’,
which refers to the indignation white people
often evince against charges of racism. We take
great umbrage at attempts to connect us to the
system of racism, in large part because we havea very simplistic definition of what a racist is:
an individual who consciously does not like
people based on race, and who seeks to be mean
to them. The problem with this definition is that
it sets up a good/bad binary: a racist is a bad
person, therefore any time someone says we’ve
done or said something racist, we must react
by defending our moral character. We explain,
minimise, deflect, deny, discount, burst into tears- anything that allows us to reject this feedback.
The notion that racism must be intentional or
conscious in order to cause harm is one of racism’s
greatest tricks. White people have often told
me of some occasion when a person of colour
drew offence because they “misunderstood” what
they’d said. I’d then ask, “But how do you know
they misunderstood you? What if they in fact
understood you perfectly, and what you don’t
understand is how what you said reveals a racist
assumption?” After all, who’s going to be better
able to determine whether there’s a current:
someone swimming with it, or against it?By putting the focus on our intentions, we are
saying the impact of what we’ve done or said
doesn’t matter. It makes the victim the aggressor
and the perpetrator the victim. It’s a kind of
everyday white racial control – a weaponisedIn 2017, ‘White Fragility’
was shortlisted as an Oxford
Dictionary Word of the Year.
Robin DiAngelo explains
what the term means.
As told to Taz Liffman