Summary: Chapter 1: The Challenges of Talking to White People About Racism

To build a more equitable society, white people have to be able to talk about racism. To do so, it helps to acknowledge that the dominant culture is white. Many white people today try to be inclusive by saying that the dominant culture is color-blind and inclusive of all races. But this only helps white people avoid discussing the ways the dominant white culture is racist.

In part, this is because most white people do not experience much overt racism on an individual or structural level. Without the experience of facing racism’s effects, and without meaningful relationships with people of color to inform them, white people find it hard to acknowledge that racism exists. American culture, today, simply defaults to white as the mainstream culture, and talks about other cultures in relation to the dominant white culture. It is helpful to reframe this for white people and help them acknowledge that white is also a racial construct, just as Black, Latino, Asian and Native American are.

Individualism and objectivity, characterized by DiAngelo as two sacred ideals of American society, also make it difficult for white people to see the collective harm that structural racism does to people of color. White people have been fed a narrative that Black people are lazy, or don’t work hard enough, and are generally undeserving of equal opportunity or help. What white people fail to see is the structural ways that white society makes it difficult for people of color to succeed. Most people would have trouble succeeding given the lack of access to safe housing, food, education, and employment that Black people in America face. The dominant American message, as created and repeated by the dominant white culture, is that all Americans are equal and have the tools for success. The truth is that access to those tools is very dependent on race.

White people must also realize that racism is not about individual acts of one white person against a person of color, or vice versa. White people have a tendency to become immediately defensive when talking about racism, because they believe they are not racist. An aspect of this defensiveness arises in white people whose European immigrant family members experienced prejudice in the past. But they were at least able to assimilate into the ruling caste, and as such, says DiAngelo, are racist because they benefit from membership in that ruling caste. Once white people realize that they are not being individually accused of racist acts, but are simply part of a larger infrastructure, the real conversation can begin.