Summary: Chapter 5: The Good / Bad Binary

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s finally proved the existence of overt racism to white people. Televised images of Southern police violently attacking peaceful Black protesters confirmed what activists had been saying for decades. Unfortunately, writes DiAngelo, this laid the foundation for one of the most effective adaptations of racism in recent history, “the good / bad binary.” White people could condemn overtly racist acts, knowing that they personally would never behave similarly. This focus on individual acts masks the larger system and makes it easier for white people to ignore conversation about racism, because they do not see themselves as part of it. When someone in the workplace points out racist treatment, white people tend to try to evaluate this within the good / bad binary. Most unequal treatment manifests as a result of the larger racist constructs: someone did not receive the same education or did not have the work experience normally required. As this unequal treatment does not fall into the category of violence, it is sometimes harder to convince white people that the problem might be due to racism. 

Even people participating in a diversity seminar based on the premise that racism is structured in our society have trouble realizing when they are unintentionally racist. DiAngelo relates a story about conducting a workshop with educators who wanted to learn how to make their administration and school more equitable. A white teacher related a story about driving to school, when a mother protesting the achievement gap yelled “You don’t understand our children!” Just by the way the teacher mimicked the mother’s accent, it was clear to everybody in the room, that the mother was Black. When DiAngelo pointed out that relying on racial stereotypes to tell the story undermined her narrative, the woman became defensive and no longer wanted to participate in the seminar. 

Reducing racism to a good / bad binary also makes it more likely that talking with a white person about possible racist behavior will trigger defensiveness. The focus on the individual makes an accusation of racism seem that it is directed at a person and that they must be bad. The conversation is then about a white individual’s guilt or innocence, instead of about structural racism. White people try to defend themselves by claiming not to be racist: “I have friends of color.” “I’m married to a person of color.” “I was in the Peace Corps.” “I worked overseas where I was a minority, and I know what being a minority is.” These individual claims do not address structural racism and only serve to take the discussion of race off the table. Then, there is no discussion at all, and the racial status quo is preserved.

Rather than completely ignore the differences among races, it is more effective to acknowledge structural forces that have created disparity (poverty, lack of access to education), and help minimize the damage that is the result of decisions made purely on the basis of race. We acknowledge gender and sexual orientation differences; we don’t simply ignore those differences when interacting with people. Similarly, we would not hand a document with a small font to a person with low vision, even if most other people would be able to read it. 

Most people realize that nobody alive today created the current racist system that operates in the United States. It was created and passed down. But in order to dismantle it, white people cannot simply become defensive when the effects of this system are pointed out to them. It is through the acknowledgement that most people of color do not have the same status, and can only achieve a similar status through advocacy, that white people can begin to help rebuild American society. When white people stop defending their individual racism, and acknowledge the wider racism carried out in their name, then progress can be made.