DiAngelo argues that most white Americans are so racially insulated from discomfort about race that even mild challenges to that comfort—like being called out for a racist remark—trigger a defensive reaction she calls white fragility, and she traces how this dynamic protects the racial status quo. Drawing on decades of running diversity trainings, she dissects moves like color-blindness and color-celebration claims that let white people position themselves as exempt from racism.
Books mentioned in White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (5)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body. —Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (chapter epigraph)”
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates: “In Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay "The Case for Reparations," he makes a similar point”
The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills: “In his book The Racial Contract, Charles W. Mills argues that the racial contract is a tacit and sometimes explicit agreement among members of the peoples of Europe...”
Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith: “These ceremonials in honor of white supremacy... —LILLIAN SMITH, Killers of the Dream (1949) (epigraph)”