White Fragility

I heard about this book on a podcast a couple of years ago. And then, I forgot the title. I finally heard about it again and got in the queue for the audiobook from my library.

After all that waiting, I am glad to say that I have finished this one. Robin has one message: dear progressive white people, you are still racist - you are going to do things, think things, say things, experience thing that are shaped by the world that we live in. That does not make you a bad person, necessarily - stop the false dichotomy. Robin says this clearly and repeatedly throughout the book where she uses metaphors and stories to help make her point.

The metaphor of the bird cage was very powerful to me. She describes how being aware of and looking very closely at one bar of a cage, we might wonder why the bird doesn't just go around. As she relates the bird cage to the many different ways that racism binds people who are not white in America.

Perhaps the most important part of the book, in my mind, is where she talks through many ways that people might deflect or think that they are not racist. One of them is the idea that people know/love/live with/work with black people so they can't see color. She argues that idea is bunk - imagine her being married to a man, loving him, living with him and trying to say she can't see the difference in men and women.

She weaves this all together with a solid narrative. Do read.