White Neutrality is a Bigger Problem than White Fragility

Are white people actually afraid to talk about race?

It is often asked why white people have difficulty talking about race, racism, racial inequities, and social justice. Many suggest that the issue is “white fragility”. Robin DiAngelo even wrote a book called “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism”. I personally have many issues with this book (which can be saved for another essay), but we saw the impact that this book had. So many white people read this in an effort to be “anti-racist”, although many of those efforts failed. Many people also thought this was the only book they had to read, and they ignored the works of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous writers in favor of hers.

DiAngelo defines “white fragility” as “the defensive reactions so many white people have when our racial worldviews, positions, or advantages are questioned or challenged. For a lot of white people, just suggesting that being white has meaning will trigger a deep, defensive response. And that defensiveness serves to maintain both our comfort and our positions in a racially inequitable society from which we benefit.”

While it is true that white fragility exists, we must look deeper to find the roots of this issue. The defensiveness of white fragility is not the biggest problem white people have with respect to talking about race. Rather, the defensiveness of white fragility is a consequence of the failure to examine the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that too many white people view whiteness through the lens of neutrality that allows them to ignore the role of whiteness and the origin and impact of race and racialization. So, rather than say that white people are afraid of talking about race or racism, I say that white people are afraid of talking about whiteness.

Eve Ewing describes the role of whiteness and the neutrality of whiteness:

• “Whiteness is not only an absence. It’s not a hole in the map of America’s racial landscape. Rather, it is a specific social category that confers identifiable and measurable social benefits.”

• “When we ignore the specificity and significance of Whiteness — the things that it is, the things that it does — we contribute to its seeming neutrality and thereby grant it power to maintain its invisibility.”

• “Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the powers of this shield is its seeming invisibility, which permits White people to move through the world without ever considering the fact of their Whiteness. This is an incredible feat, through which White people get to be only normal, neutral, or without any race at all, while the rest of us are saddled with this unpleasant business of being racialized.”

To be clear, when we talk about “white people”, we are specifically talking about people who are racialized as white in the same way that when we talk about others who aren’t white, we are talking about how they have been racialized. Racialization can be defined as:

“…the processes by which a group of people is defined by their “race.” Processes of racialization begin by attributing racial meaning to people's identity and, in particular, as they relate to social structures and institutional systems, such as housing, employment, and education. In societies in which “White” people have economic, political, and social power, processes of racialization have emerged from the creation of a hierarchy in social structures and systems based on “race.” The visible effects of processes of racialization are the racial inequalities embedded within social structures and systems.”

Racialization is not neutral; it is intentional. People racialize when they want to dehumanize, harm, exclude, or subjugate. So, racialization is a hierarchical proposition, and through the creation of that hierarchy, colonization, subjugation, and oppression were justified, perpetuated, and embedded in systems and structures. Therefore, any mention of white people or whiteness is a reflection of something that was intentional and the opposite of neutral. The process of racialization was to create and sustain inequality, and the inequality that we see today is a direct result of racialization.

The truth is that white people have become more and more comfortable talking about race but ONLY when whiteness can be the standard, neutral, or ignored. We even see this reflected in the usage of certain terminology. For instance, we have constantly seen people, institutions, and organizations refer to individuals who are not white (particularly those who are not white, cis men) as “diverse”, but this is problematic terminology because people and individuals can’t be “diverse”. Diversity is a collective, and in the case of race, people use “diverse” as a synonym for “not white” or outside the norm/standard. In regard to race, white people are never referred to as “diverse”, yet every other race frequently is. The term “minority” has also become a blanket term very often used to refer to those who aren’t white, and the usage of the term ignores the fact that there is a power dynamic and forced lack of access that leads to groups being minoritized. We don’t regularly refer to the impact of the “majority” (nor do we call white people “majorities”) or question why they are the majority or examine the power dynamics created by the majority.

We have also seen people talk about “inclusion” or “cultural competency” in ways that reinforce the norms of whiteness or whiteness as neutral. In the case of inclusion, the standard is white norms, culture, and spaces, which are frequently changed and adjusted to marginalize and exclude others. Other people can possibly be “included” if they fit these norms and/or be forced to assimilate to be included. However, inclusion almost never entails creating spaces that fit the wants and needs of everyone. With “cultural competency”, white norms are considered the standard “culture” and other “cultures” are to be learned about or tolerated. Whiteness as neutrality is also weaponized through things like professionalism, which is based on standards of whiteness yet not explicitly stated. Instead, people who aren’t white are often ostracized or punished.

White people are also more comfortable talking about social justice (or what they perceive to be social justice) when whiteness can be neutral. Rather than seeing whiteness as constructed to marginalize and harm, whiteness is seen as neutral or even invisible, and the focus is placed on people who are not white. White saviorism emerges because it allows white people to detach themselves and see discrepancies, gaps, and inequities as happenstance, coincidence, or even a reflection of a lack of ability/capability. The latter creates deficit-based narratives of entire groups of people. And, this detachment allows white people to be “allies” without examining systems, structures, and the role of racialization.

Finally, white people are much more comfortable talking about race when whiteness can be undefined and unexamined. I frequently challenge white people to define what it means to be “white”, explore the origin of whiteness, and examine how their whiteness shows up in places and spaces. That leads to discomfort because while whiteness is ever present in systems, structures, and spaces, many white people don’t want to acknowledge or examine the presence of that whiteness. 

Here is the problem for many white people: They can’t define what it means to be white, but they want to be protected by whiteness. They don’t want to examine the role of whiteness in spaces, but they want whiteness (or the culture of whiteness) to be the prevalent norm in those spaces.

When whiteness is invisible or neutral, white people are able to ignore advantages and see their successes as a measure of their ability and hard work only. And when whiteness is invisible or neutral, they are able to see themselves not as members of a dominant group that was intentionally, structurally, and systemically created but as individuals who can exist inside or outside of the system whenever it fits their needs. And their desire to assist those with disadvantages becomes virtuous and altruistic rather than a recognition of the inequities caused by racialization and power structures where they are the beneficiary.

We often ask why white people have such difficulty talking about race and racism when we should be asking why white people have such difficulty talking about whiteness. It is not a coincidence that white people are allowed to identify as white, operate through the privileges and power dynamics formed by whiteness, and treat people who aren’t white as “other” without being able to define whiteness or understand where whiteness came from. When white people are able to navigate whiteness without scrutinizing it, they are not fragile, and they don’t find it difficult to discuss race. Only when white people are challenged to understand the role of racialization and view whiteness beyond a neutral state does the fragility and problems emerge.

So many white people claim that they feel comfortable talking about race. What I want to know is if white people are comfortable talking about whiteness.