White defensiveness is the defensive response by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo. [1]
White people are described within the theory as displaying substantially uneasy responses when questioned about racial dynamics (i.e. instances of possible racism)—said to be as a self-protective strategy to conceal grief, trauma, and intergenerational trauma. [2]
White defensiveness describes some of the perceived responses when white people are confronted with issues involving race and racism. Academics have proposed subtypes of white defensiveness, such as white denial, white diversion, and white fragility. [3] [4] There are also varied contexts and descriptions of what can cause the expression of this theorized defensiveness. For example, political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields have proposed that the examination of white privilege "triggers white defensiveness". [5]
Academics, such as Robin DiAngelo, Julia Chinyere Oparah, George Yancy and Leah Gaskin Fitchue, have detailed ranges of what they define as white defensive responses in their works. [6] [7] [8]
White denial has been identified as a defensive response by white people, in which realities of inequality are denied or downplayed. [6] [9] One example is the claim that racism simply does not exist. [10] Historically, it has also taken more extreme forms such as the suggestion that slavery in the United States was a benign system or even had a civilizing effect on African Americans. [11] Regarding white denial, the theologian Leah Gaskin Fitchue wrote in 2015: [7]
By its very nature, denial is a defense mechanism, a distortion of reality, a delusional projection to reshape reality in a way one desires to see it. James Perkinson's study, White Theology, counters white denial in calling for a "white theology of responsibility (agreeing with Cone) that a serious engagement with history and culture must be at the heart of any American projection of integrity"...
While denial links to implicit and unconscious bias. White denial may also be driven by white guilt which suggests that acknowledgement of the existence of discrimination or racism against another group may be identity-threatening for members of dominant and majority groups. [12] [13]
The philosopher George Yancy has spoken of his experiences of white denial in academia and within responses to his works, such as his 2015 article Dear White America . [14] From her 1998 research, professor Julia Chinyere Oparah proposed that when "white feminists cease to respond to challenges from black women with counter-attack and defensiveness" that anti-racism efforts can progress "beyond white denial" by "acknowledging that white feminists, as individuals, often silence, ignore or otherwise oppress black women." [8]
Robin DiAngelo has argued that social pressure on people of color to "collude with white fragility" accommodates other forms of white defensiveness, in particular "white denial". [9]
White diversion is a term coined by the academic Max Harris to denote a phenomenon in which white people may obstruct dialogue or acknowledgement of race-based discrimination by redirecting or comparing the subject to other social issues. That proposed form of white defensiveness can seek to reorient blame towards people of color and indigenous peoples, rather than address the role of white people. [10] Harris, a University of Oxford Fellow, suggests that when "racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed." [15]
Max Harris is the author of the book titled "The New Zealand Project". He is based in New Zealand, but his background is from the United Kingdom. He believes that to name whiteness is to name dominance as it's often connected to backgrounds. He believes there are four types of white defensiveness and that includes denial, diversion, detriment-centring, and the demand to move on. These terms were created due to Max witnessing the Māori people of New Zealand experiencing hostility towards them in as early as the 1990’s. The term is similar to the concept of "reverse racism" as the Māori people become often portrayed negatively when any aspect of racism is raised. [16]
Robin DiAngelo has theorized that as the mainstream perception of racism implies a conscious "meanness", racism's definition is the cause of practically all white defensiveness. [17] [18] DiAngelo, who coined the term "white fragility" in the early 2010s and later released her 2018 book White Fragility , describes "white fragility" as a range of defensive responses by white people. [19] According to Robin DiAngelo, white people react to "racial stress" with an "outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation". DiAngelo theorized that this reaction served to "reinstate white racial equilibrium". [20]
The Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada endorsed the concept but found DiAngelo's book flawed. [21] The book was criticized by the American linguist John McWhorter, who argued that it "openly infantilized Black people". [22]
The journalist Peter Baker argues that "white fragility" can be expressed by silence or shutting down; denial; accusations of reverse racism; or upset, anger, or rage at an interpersonal level. [1] [6] The latter individualistic form of response is not, however, to be confused with the terms "white backlash" or "white rage", which refer to exclusionary or violent group reactions by some whites to the societal progression of people of color. [23] [24]
Max Harris has observed the phenomenon in the politics of New Zealand. Referring to this form of white defensiveness as "Diversion", some white New Zealanders deflect attention onto the pre-European settlers era before colonization by ascribing an unrelated guilt or culpability to Māori people. [15] [ non-primary source needed ]
In 1800, a failed rebellion planned by the slave Gabriel Prosser caused both a drop in support for anti-slavery societies, which had been petitioning against structural racism, and an increase in white defensiveness in the Upper South. [25] In the post-slavery United States, there has historically been frustration from African American communities at white defensiveness and its consequences causing a lack of accountability. [26]
Multiple studies have explored how white defensiveness, intersecting with whiteness, operates in areas of society, such as education. [27] Cynthia Levine-Rasky's 2011 research showed how an unconscious white defensiveness is often present in traditionally-minded teaching candidates in a Canadian university. [28]
Cameron McCarthy argues that a form of defensiveness can be an insistence on a relativistic view of history in which white people are also the victims of historical oppression and racism. [29] In the late 1990s, Professor Paul Orlowski observed the emergence of white defensiveness in working-class communities of British Columbia, Canada, where investigating structural racism in the province led to accusations of being "anti-white". [30]
Some assert that the use of technical terms from critical theory (such as "white privilege" and "white fragility") may prevent proper engagement with the social phenomena involved with structural racism. In 2019, as reported by Professor Lauren Michele Jackson, the writer Claudia Rankine abandoned attempts to document conversations with white men, [31] due to her perception that the use of accurate terminology was actually providing somewhat of a barrier to progress and further enabling white defensiveness. [32]
In explicit bias, the person is fully aware and understands the ramifications of their actions and intentions. These actions might look different, like deliberate acts of exclusion, verbal or physical harassment, or derogatory or exclusive language, but all are processed consciously by the acting subject. [33]
Implicit bias comes from outside the person's conscious understanding of themselves and the world, and can be in direct conflict with their expressed opinions and beliefs. Even though it may not be fully understood by the acting subject, this bias influences how people process decisions and make judgements, especially in cases where the acting subject is making a quick decision or is under duress. [34]
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, ancestry, ethnic or national origin, and/or skin color and hair texture. Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain group. Governments can discriminate explicitly in law, for example through policies of racial segregation, disparate enforcement of laws, or disproportionate allocation of resources. Some jurisdictions have anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the government or individuals from being discriminated based on race in various circumstances. Some institutions and laws use affirmative action to attempt to overcome or compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. In some cases, this is simply enhanced recruitment of members of underrepresented groups; in other cases, there are firm racial quotas. Opponents of strong remedies like quotas characterize them as reverse discrimination, where members of a dominant or majority group are discriminated against.
Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.
White guilt is a belief that white people bear a collective responsibility for the harm which has resulted from historical or current racist treatment of people belonging to other ethnic groups, as for example in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonialism, and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
The term "person of color" is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the United States; however, since the 2010s, it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere, including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and Singapore.
Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege, the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism, and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people. It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century. It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.
White pride and white power are expressions primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, fascist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist organizations in order to signal racist or racialist viewpoints. It is also a slogan used by the prominent post-Ku Klux Klan group Stormfront and a term used to make racist/racialist viewpoints more palatable to the general public who may associate historical abuses with the terms white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist.
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, not based only on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical theory rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.
Racialization or ethnicization is a sociological concept used to describe the intent and processes by which ethnic or racial identities are systematically constructed within a society. Constructs for racialization are centered on erroneous generalizations about racial aspects of distinct groups, leading to the denial of equal societal engagement. It is a fallacy of groupism and a process of racial dominance that has lasting harmful or damaging outcomes for racialized groups. An associated term is self-racialization, which refers to the practice by dominant groups to justify and defend their dominant status or to deny its existence. Individually, self-racialization may not be consistent throughout one's lifetime.
Whiteness theory is a field under whiteness studies, that studies what white identity means in terms of social, political, racial, economic, culture, etc. Whiteness theory posits that if some Western societies make whiteness central to their respective national and cultural identities, their white populations may become blind to the privilege associated with White identity. The theory examines how that blindness may exclude, otherize and perhaps harm non-white individuals and segments of the population.
Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is the concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are forms of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements, and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by Black people and other people of color cause disadvantages for white people.
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which a presumed superior race are consistently ranked above other races. These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
Laissez-faire racism is closely related to color blindness and covert racism, and is theorised to encompass an ideology that blames minorities for their poorer economic situations, viewing it as the result of cultural inferiority. The term is used largely by scholars of whiteness studies, who argue that laissez-faire racism has tangible consequences even though few would openly claim to be, or even believe they are, laissez-faire racists.
Racism in Cuba refers to racial discrimination in Cuba. In Cuba, dark skinned Afro-Cubans are the only group on the island referred to as black while lighter skinned, mixed race, Afro-Cuban mulattos are often not characterized as fully black or fully white. Race conceptions in Cuba are unique because of its long history of racial mixing and appeals to a "raceless" society. The Cuban census reports that 65% of the population is white while foreign figures report an estimate of the number of whites at anywhere from 40 to 45 percent. This is likely due to the self-identifying mulattos who are sometimes designated officially as white. A common myth in Cuba is that every Cuban has at least some African ancestry, influenced by historical mestizaje nationalism. Given the high number of immigrants from Europe in the 20th century, this is far from true. Several pivotal events have impacted race relations on the island. Using the historic race-blind nationalism first established around the time of independence, Cuba has navigated the abolition of slavery, the suppression of black clubs and political parties, the revolution and its aftermath, and the special period.
White backlash, also known as white rage or whitelash, is related to the politics of white grievance, and is the negative response of some white people to the racial progress of other ethnic groups in rights and economic opportunities, as well as their growing cultural parity, political self-determination, or dominance.
Social privilege is an advantage or entitlement that benefits individuals belonging to certain groups, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on social class, wealth, education, caste, age, height, skin color, physical fitness, nationality, geographic location, cultural differences, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, neurodiversity, physical disability, sexual orientation, religion, and other differentiating factors. Individuals can be privileged in one area, such as education, and not privileged in another area, such as health. The amount of privilege any individual has may change over time, such as when a person becomes disabled, or when a child becomes a young adult.
Robin Jeanne DiAngelo is an American author working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and whiteness studies. She formerly served as a tenured professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and is currently an affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington. She is known for her work pertaining to "white fragility", an expression she coined in 2011 and explored further in a 2018 book entitled White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is a 2018 book written by Robin DiAngelo about race relations in the United States. An academic with experience in diversity training, DiAngelo coined the term "white fragility" in 2011 to describe what she views as any defensive instincts or reactions that a white person experiences when questioned about race or made to consider their own race. In White Fragility, DiAngelo views racism in the United States as systemic and often perpetuated subconsciously by individuals. She recommends against viewing racism as committed intentionally by "bad people".
White identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a white person and as relating to being white. White identity has been researched in data and polling, historically and in social sciences. There are however polarized positions in media and academia as to whether a positive white racial identity which does not diminish other racial groups is plausible or achievable in the Western world's political climate.
Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm is a 2021 book by Robin DiAngelo on the subject of race relations in the United States. Following on from White Fragility (2018), DiAngelo criticizes behavior by white progressives as racist and discusses situations from her diversity training workshops and personal life. The book became a New York Times Best Seller, and received mixed critical reception.
Most Americans will find DiAngelo's catalog of these evasive moves familiar; wearingly so for people of color, embarrassingly so for whites. Even for readers relatively wise to the ways of white defensiveness, it is usefully bracing to see so many maneuvers standing in a line-up together.
In other words, the rhetoric of disparity can mask white privilege, thereby perpetuating the denial of it, or it can implicate whites as "beneficiaries of the inequitable distribution of social resources," which triggers white defensiveness.
Ringrose suggests that one of the main challenges of critical antiracist pedagogy comes from White defensiveness in feminist antiracist spaces and classrooms. But, in this instance, the usual White defensiveness — including shutting down, silence, anger, tears, denial, disavowal - was momentarily suspended.
Perhaps the most pernicious form of pressure on people of color: the pressure to collude with white fragility by minimizing their racial experiences to accommodate white denial and defensiveness. In other words, they don't share their pain with us because we can't handle it.
Max Harris warns against letting this discomfort drive us into white defensiveness. He writes about four types of defensiveness - denial that racism exists; diversion, where attention is deflected from racism to a perceived flaw in Māori society; detriment centering, where we focus only on detriments in Māori communities and ignore the hard work of the Māori (for instance in securing land rights, or normalising Māori-centric health models); and lastly the demand to move on, that Māori should 'get over it'.
White denial of black suffering is not a new phenomenon. For instance, the dominant white mindset during the antebellum era - which is still widely held by many today - was the slavery was a benign and civilizing apparatus for enslaved Africans.... This pattern of white denial will most likely persist whether or not African Americans are open about their problems or a black man resides in the White House.
I was the target of my colleague's white authoritarian denial of my epistemic integrity. This phenomenon is not uncommon. White people presume to know Black people better than Black people know themselves.
The second type of white defensiveness is Diversion. This is where, in instances in which facts about racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed through a claim that Māori themselves are guilty of some other wrong.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)The mainstream definition of 'racism' is when an individual consciously doesn't like people based on race and is intentionally mean to them," said academic, longtime diversity trainer and author of White Fragility Robin DiAngelo. "Who is going to own intentional meanness? That definition is the root of virtually all white defensiveness.
Not often encountering these challenges, we withdraw, defend, cry, argue, minimize, ignore, and in other ways push back to regain our racial position and equilibrium. I term that push back white fragility.
As a direct result of increased white defensiveness, antislavery societies in the Upper South disbanded or declined. Meanwhile, in the North, a new scientific racism encouraged white residents to interpret social status in racial terms
Nothing is more important than listening during these public conversations. I heard the defensiveness of white people who did not want to be told that their ancestors may have been racist; I heard African Americans frustrated with the lack of historical accountability.
Traditional teacher candidates deny or dismiss any relationship between racism and social institutions like the school, they support assimilation for marginalized groups, and they construct fundamental differences between themselves and members of such groups (p. 262); White defensiveness is common among teacher candidates (McIntyre, 1997a; Sleeter 1995a, 1995b; O'Donnell, 1998; Smith, 1998; Clooney & Akintunde, 1999). Emerging from a political agenda in which the language of marginalization is appropriated by socially dominant groups (Roman, 1993), this response is most evident among the traditional teacher candidates in this study (p. 270).
The current celebration of ubiquitous or essential "racial differences" (permitted by the discourse of multiculturalism) is itself already in danger of becoming an expression of rearticulated white defensiveness. By white defensiveness, I mean the relativistic assertion that white, like "people of color", are history's oppressed subjects of racism.
The findings from my research, corroborated by my subsequent classroom experiences, go far to explain the recent rise of "white defensiveness" within British Columbia's working class. That attitude can easily result in ugly behaviour... a few days after a Vancouver daily printed a one-page article on the finds of my thesis, a student informed me that both he and his mother "were outraged" by my anti-white ideas.
In a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Claudia Rankine cataloged her own aborted attempts to talk to white men about white male privilege.
"They're just defensive," he said. "White fragility," he added, with a laugh. This white man who has spent the past 25 years in the world alongside me believes he understands and recognizes his own privilege. Certainly he knows the right terminology to use, even when these agreed-upon terms prevent us from stumbling into moments of real recognition. These phrases — white fragility, white defensiveness, white appropriation — have a habit of standing in for the complicated mess of a true conversation.