White Fragility (2019)

Written on July 25th, 2020 by James

Author: Robin DiAngelo

I have been struggling with my own thoughts about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the last few months and I felt that I needed to read more about racism in general. I had found it convenient to think of the problems and protests as being an “American thing” - whilst much of what is happening is uniquely specific to the US’s racial history, there is a broader movement going on globally which I feel ill-equipped to understand.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is a book that reading it as a white person helps me get some semblance of a grip on what is going on. I think it is a valuable book for anyone to read but it felt especially vital to read it right now. It can at times be hard to read, but, like the topic it is asking us to think about, we need to start challenging our in-built biases and assumptions – also a hard task.