White Fragility

★★★★★/5

Hi guys! We've been a little quieter on our blog than we originally planned to be this past week. With the events surrounding the deaths of George Floyd & Breonna Taylor and resulting protests, it felt important to step away from our normal social media activity and reflect on everything that is going on.

I stand in strong support of Black Lives Matter but wanted to try to make sure I was really taking a step back to learn more about today's climate of racism and how I may be contributing to it. For me, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo was a great place to start. The book takes a hard look at "white fragility" and how our discomfort in acknowledging and discussing race/racism contributes to the problem on all levels - even when we are intending to do the opposite. I was especially interested to learn about the illusion of the "good/bad binary": in which we are taught to believe that to participate in any racist behavior makes you inherently a bad person. DiAngelo explains that the problem with this mentality is that it causes white people to become defensive when given feedback about their racist behavior, rather than being open and using it to learn how to avoid problematic actions in the future. This, in addition to the importance of recognizing race instead of trying to be 'color blind' (if you don't see race, how will you reduce racism?) was really important for me to learn.

I've been reading a lot about how change starts at home, and want to give a huge shoutout to the members of my immediate family. We tend to have pretty different political views, but as a family decided to all read White Fragility (or similar content) so we could learn from and discuss it in the coming weeks. I believe that our different takeaways will spark the kind of discussion that will help us to take steps forward in learning about where we can do better individually and as a family. 

Conclusion: As a white person, it is my responsibility to learn from and change any racist practices I participate in - and while I know that while I will never be perfect, I can honestly say I am trying everyday.