White defensiveness

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White defensiveness, white denial, white diversion, and white fragility are terms used in some academic and social discussions to describe certain reactions by white individuals during conversations about societal discrimination and concepts such as structural racism and white privilege. It has been applied to analyze responses to discussions of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonization, and scholarly work examining the long-term effects of these historical systems on contemporary societies. Researchers have proposed several categories of such responses, including what they label as denial, diversion, and fragility, with the latter concept gaining wider attention through the work of scholar Robin DiAngelo. [1]

Contents

Within these theoretical frameworks, some white individuals are described as exhibiting discomfort or resistance when questioned about racial dynamics or potential instances of racism. These reactions are interpreted by proponents of the theory as coping or self-protective mechanisms, sometimes linked to emotional responses such as distress or the perceived inheritance of historical experiences across generations. [2]

Definition

White defensiveness is a term used in some academic literature to describe certain responses that may occur when white individuals are confronted with discussions about race and racism. Scholars have proposed various categories within this concept, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility. [3] [4] These frameworks are applied in different contexts to explain reactions that some researchers associate with such discussions. For instance, political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields have suggested that examining the concept of white privilege can prompt what they describe as defensive responses among some white individuals. [5]

Some academics such as Robin DiAngelo, Julia Chinyere Oparah, George Yancy and Leah Gaskin Fitchue have outlined and analyzed what they characterize as forms of white defensive responses in their works. [6] [7] [8]

Subtypes

White denial

White denial is a term used by some scholars to describe responses in which certain individuals or groups dispute or minimize the existence or significance of racial inequality. [6] [9] Examples cited in the literature include claims that racism is no longer a meaningful social factor. [10] Historically, the concept has also been applied by some commentators to interpretations of slavery in the United States that portray it as less harmful or as having had positive effects, such as the argument that American slavery was a benign system or even had a civilizing effect on African Americans. [11] . In this context, 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"...

Some researchers link denial to implicit or unconscious bias. Others suggest it may be influenced by feelings of guilt or discomfort, proposing that acknowledging discrimination or racism against another group can be perceived as challenging to the identity of members of socially dominant or majority groups. [12] [13]

George Yancy has discussed what he describes as experiences of white denial in academic settings and in reactions to his work, including his 2015 article Dear White America . [14] Based on her 1998 research, professor Julia Chinyere Oparah argued that anti-racism efforts may advance when white feminists respond to critiques from black women with less defensiveness, and when they recognize ways in which white feminists, as individuals, may silence, overlook, or marginalize Black women. [8]

Robin DiAngelo has written that social pressures on people of color to accommodate what she terms “white fragility” can also reinforce other defensive responses, including what she describes as white denial. [9]

White diversion

White diversion is a term introduced by academic Max Harris to describe situations in which discussions of race-based discrimination are redirected toward other social issues. According to Harris, this redirection can shift attention away from specific claims of racial discrimination and, in some cases, toward broader or unrelated societal concerns. [10] Harris, a fellow at the University of Oxford, argues that conversations about racism or colonisation may lose focus when such redirection occurs. [15]

Max Harris is the author of The New Zealand Project. Although originally from the United Kingdom, he is based in New Zealand. Harris argues that discussions of “whiteness” are often linked to historical and social power structures. He outlines four categories of what he describes as defensive responses: denial, diversion, detriment-centring, and calls to move on. Harris developed these concepts based on his observations of social tensions involving Māori communities in New Zealand from the 1990s onward. He compares this framework to debates surrounding the idea of “reverse racism”, noting that Māori individuals are sometimes portrayed negatively when issues of racism are discussed. [16]

White fragility

Robin DiAngelo has proposed that common understandings of racism—as intentional or overt hostility—contribute to defensive reactions when racism is discussed. [17] [18] DiAngelo introduced the term “white fragility” in the early 2010s and later expanded on it in her 2018 book White Fragility. She defines the concept as a set of emotional and behavioral responses that can arise when individuals experience what she calls “racial stress”. [19]

According to DiAngelo, these responses may include emotions such as anger, fear, or guilt, as well as behaviors such as argumentation, withdrawal, or avoidance. She argues that these reactions function to restore a sense of personal or social stability. Her work has generated both support and criticism in public discourse and academic commentary. [20]

Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada expressed partial support for DiAngelo’s arguments while also identifying what he viewed as weaknesses in the book. [21] Linguist John McWhorter criticized the work, arguing that it framed Black individuals in a condescending manner. [22]

Journalist Peter Baker has suggested that behaviors associated with “white fragility” may include silence, denial, accusations of reverse racism, or emotional reactions such as anger or frustration in interpersonal situations. [1] [6] He distinguishes these responses from terms such as “white backlash” or “white rage”, which are used to describe broader collective or, in some cases, violent reactions to social changes affecting racial or ethnic groups. [23] [24]

History

European colonialism and slavery

Max Harris has discussed a pattern observed in New Zealand politics in which debates about the colonial period sometimes shift focus to pre-European Māori society. He describes this as a form of rhetorical diversion, in which responsibility for historical outcomes associated with colonization is reframed by emphasizing earlier conflicts or practices among Māori communities. [15]

In 1800, a failed rebellion planned by the enslaved man Gabriel Prosser was followed by a decline in public support for some anti-slavery organizations in the Upper South, alongside changes in political and social attitudes among white populations. [25] After slavery was abolished in the United States following the American Civil War, African American communities have historically expressed concern that defensive reactions in discussions of race and history can reduce attention to accountability and policy responses to racial inequality. [26]

Study of phenomenon

A number of academic studies have examined how defensive responses related to racial identity, including the concept of whiteness, appear in different social contexts such as education. [27] Research by Cynthia Levine-Rasky in 2011 analyzed how implicit defensive attitudes were present among some teacher-training students at a Canadian university, particularly those with more traditional educational perspectives. [28]

Types of expression

Reverse racism

Cameron McCarthy has described a perspective in which some individuals emphasize a relativistic interpretation of history, arguing that white populations have also experienced forms of historical oppression and racism. [29] In the late 1990s, Professor Paul Orlowski documented debates in working-class communities in British Columbia, Canada, where research into structural racism was sometimes met with claims that such inquiries were biased or characterized as “anti-white”. [30]

Terminologist barriers

Some commentators argue that the use of specialized terminology associated with critical theory, such as “white privilege” or “white fragility,” can hinder broader discussion of social and institutional inequalities. In 2019, as reported by Professor Lauren Michele Jackson, writer Claudia Rankine stated that she discontinued attempts to record conversations with white men, [31] expressing the view that reliance on precise but contested terminology could limit productive dialogue rather than facilitate it. [32]

Explicit, or conscious bias

Explicit bias refers to attitudes or behaviors in which individuals are aware of their intentions and understand the potential consequences of their actions. This may include overt unambiguous racism or ethnic discrimination (such as using slurs), deliberate exclusion, verbal or physical harassment, or the use of derogatory or exclusionary language, all of which are consciously recognized by the individual engaging in them. [33]

Implicit, or unconscious bias

Implicit bias describes attitudes or associations that operate outside an individual’s conscious awareness and may differ from their stated beliefs or values. Although not always recognized by the person affected, such biases can influence perception, decision-making, and judgment, particularly in situations involving time pressure or stress. [34]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Peter C. Baker (June 19, 2018). "A Cure for White Fragility". Pacific Standard . 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.
  2. ↑ Samson, Derynne. "The Intersection of Antiracism and Grief: Moving Race-Related Conversations Forward". Pacifica Graduate Institute ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
  3. ↑ Matias, Cheryl E.; DiAngelo, Robin (2013). "Beyond the Face of Race: Emo-Cognitive Explorations of White Neurosis and Racial Cray-Cray". Educational Foundations. 27: 3–20. ISSN   1047-8248.
  4. ↑ Durán, Robert J.; Posadas, Carlos E. (1 January 2013). "Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Land of Enchantment: Juvenile Justice Disparities as a Reflection of White-Over-Color Ascendancy" . Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. 11 (1–2): 93–111. doi:10.1080/15377938.2013.739430. ISSN   1537-7938. S2CID   144008401.
  5. ↑ Angie Maxwell; Todd Shields (2019). "Southern White Privilege". The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN   978-0190265960. 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.
  6. 1 2 3 George Yancy (2014). "Teaching White Settler Subjects Antiracist Feminisms". Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms. Routledge. p. 67. ISBN   978-0415836692. 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.
  7. 1 2 Leah Gaskin Fitchue (2015). R. Drew Smith; William Ackah; Anthony G. Reddie (eds.). Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN   978-1628462005.
  8. 1 2 Julia Sudbury (1998). "Sisters and brothers in struggle?". Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation. Routledge. p. 214. ISBN   978-0415167314.
  9. 1 2 Robin DiAngelo (2018). White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press. p. 159. ISBN   978-0822325154. 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.
  10. 1 2 Rebecca Kiddle; Bianca Elkington; Moana Jackson; Ocean Ripeka Mercier; Mike Ross; Jennie Smeaton; Amanda Thomas (2020). "Pākehā and doing the work of decolonisation". Imagining Decolonisation. Bridget Williams Books. p. 44. ISBN   978-0822325154. 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'.
  11. ↑ David H. Ikard; Martell Lee Teasley (2012). "Introduction". Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia. Indiana University Press. p. 10. ISBN   978-0253006288. 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.
  12. ↑ "Understanding the Origins of White Denial". INSEAD Knowledge. 2020-09-24. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  13. ↑ Kinias, Zoe (2016). "Bolstering White American's Ethnic Identity Resiliency: Self-Affirmation, Authentic Best-Self Reflection, and Mindfulness Meditation". INSEAD Working Paper.
  14. ↑ George Yancy (2020). "Discussing the Backlash to "Dear White America"". Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 21. ISBN   978-1538131626. 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.
  15. 1 2 Max Harris (June 10, 2018). "Racism and White Defensiveness in Aotearoa: A Pākehā Perspective". e-tangata.co.nz. 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.
  16. ↑ Jun 10, Max Harris |; Read, 2018 | 94 | 10 Min (2018-06-09). "Racism and White Defensiveness in Aotearoa: A Pākehā Perspective". E-Tangata. Retrieved 2022-08-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  17. ↑ Anna Kelsey-Sugg; Sasha Fegan (August 21, 2018). "Robin DiAngelo on why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism". ABC Online.
  18. ↑ Nadira Hira (August 22, 2019). "Why the Fight Against Racism has to Start With Owning It". Newsweek . 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.
  19. ↑ Robin DiAngelo (April 10, 2015). "White America's racial illiteracy: Why our national conversation is poisoned from the start". Salon . 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.
  20. ↑ DiAngelo, Robin (2011). "White Fragility". International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. 3 (3): 54–70. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  21. ↑ Lozada, Carlos (June 18, 2020). "White fragility is real. But 'White Fragility' is flawed". Washington Post . Retrieved March 18, 2021.
  22. ↑ McWhorter, John (July 15, 2020). "The Dehumanizing Condescension of 'White Fragility'". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  23. ↑ Durham, Martin (13 November 2007). White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-134-23181-2 – via Google Books.
  24. ↑ Hauge, Daniel J. (2 September 2017). "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide" . Journal of Pastoral Theology. 27 (3): 195–198. doi:10.1080/10649867.2017.1402555. ISSN   1064-9867. S2CID   186899985.
  25. ↑ Michael Kazin; Rebecca Edwards; Adam Rothman, eds. (2011). The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. Princeton University Press. p. 1. ISBN   978-0691152073. 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
  26. ↑ Brian Murphy (2018). "Project Say Something's Whose Monument Project". In David B. Allison (ed.). Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 255. ISBN   978-1538113738. 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.
  27. ↑ Cynthia Ninivaggi (2008), Whites Teaching Whites About Race: Racial Identity Theory and White Defensiveness in the Classroom, Teaching Anthropology Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges Notes
  28. ↑ Cynthia Levine-Rasky (2011), The practice of whiteness among teacher candidates, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 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).
  29. ↑ Cameron McCarthy (2005). Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN   978-0415949934. 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.
  30. ↑ Paul Orlowski (2001). Carl E. James; Adrienne Shadd (eds.). Talking about Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity, and Language. Between the Lines Books. p. 263. ISBN   978-1896357362. 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.
  31. ↑ Lauren Michele Jackson (September 4, 2019). "I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked". Slate . 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.
  32. ↑ Claudia Rankine (July 17, 2019). "I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked". The New York Times . "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.
  33. ↑ "NCCC :: 1". nccc.georgetown.edu. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  34. ↑ "What is Unconscious Bias? (Infographic)". Catalyst. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
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