White defensiveness
White defensiveness refers to defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. It can also find expression in response to the historical analysis of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or the present-day legacy of these systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms, or subtypes, of white defensiveness. In alphabetical order, some of these subtypes are: white denial, white diversion and white fragility, the last of which is a term popularized by Robin DiAngelo.
Definition
White defensiveness describes some of the perceived responses when white people have to contend with issues of race and racism. Various academics have proposed subtypes of white defensiveness, such as white denial, white diversion, and white fragility. 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"."White fragility", as described by academic Robin DiAngelo in a 2011 paper, states that 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." The term has since been analyzed in academia and described in media as a distinct range of expressions by many white people in a number of historical settings, and up to modern times. The term is often tied to the idea of structural racism.
Other academics, such as Julia Chinyere Oparah, George Yancy and Leah Gaskin Fitchue, have detailed ranges of, what they define as, white defensive responses in their works. Journalist Peter Baker argues that "white fragility" can find expression in silence or shutting down, denial, accusations of reverse racism, as well as upset, anger or rage at an interpersonal level. 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.
Subtypes
White denial
White denial has been identified as a form of white defensiveness. Among various guises, it can find expression in the claim that racism simply doesn't exist. It has historically, however, 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. Regarding white denial, in 2015 professor Leah Gaskin Fitchue wrote: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 that a serious engagement with history and culture must be at the heart of any American projection of integrity"
Professor 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. 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".
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".
White diversion
White diversion is a term, coined by academic Max Harris, to denote a phenomenon where white people may obstruct dialogue regarding race-based discrimination, or otherwise block acknowledgement of these factors in society. This proposed form of white defensiveness can seek to reorientate blame towards people of color and indigenous peoples. Harris, a University of Oxford Fellow, suggests that when "racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed".White fragility
Academic Robin DiAngelo has theorized that, as the mainstream perception of racism implies a conscious "meanness", that racism's definition is the cause of practically all white defensiveness. DiAngelo, who coined the term "white fragility" in the early 2010s and later released her 2018 book White Fragility, describes this fragility as a range of defensive responses by white people.History
European colonialism and slavery
Writer Genevieve Valentine has explored how white defensiveness has hampered meaningful introspection of the consequences of European colonialism. For example, rather than point to how the adoption of slavery and European horse culture by the indigenous Native American tribes was a desperate method of survival, it can be used as an equivocation, in a form of justification, as to other racial groups also being involved in the practices brought to North America by white settlers.Similarly, University of Oxford Fellow Max Harris has observed the phenomenon in the politics of New Zealand. Referring to this form of white defensiveness as "Diversion", some European New Zealanders deflect attention onto the pre-Pākehā settlers era before colonization, ascribing an unrelated guilt or culpability to Māori people.
In 1800, a failed rebellion planned by 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. 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.
Study of the phenomenon
Multiple studies have explored how white defensiveness, intersecting with whiteness, operates in areas of society, such as education.Professor Cynthia Levine-Rasky's 2011 research showed how an unconscious white defensiveness is often present in traditional teaching candidates in the West. White defensiveness has been academically examined within the context of post-election of Donald Trump.
Types of expression
Reverse racism
A form of defensiveness can be an insistence on a relativistic view of history, where white people are also the victims of historical oppression and racism. In the late 1990s, professor Paul Orlowski observed the emergence of white defensiveness in working-class communities of British Columbia, where investigating structural racism in the province led to accusations of being "anti-white".Terminologist barriers
Some scholars and researchers have pointed to the increasingly understood use and application of critical theory terms, such as white privilege or fragility, creating the potential for terminologist-driven dialogue which fails to properly engage the social phenomena involved with structural racism. In 2019, as reported by professor Lauren Michele Jackson, writer Claudia Rankine abandoned attempts to document conversations with white men, due to her perception that the use of accurate terminology was actually providing somewhat of a barrier to progress and further enabling white defensiveness.Criticism
Jesse Lile, an educator and relationship therapist, has argued that the DiAngelo's concept of white fragility places white people in a double bind, first enjoining them to engage in a conversation on racism, then treating any active engagement on their part as an exercise of white privilege, and finally labelling them as fragile when they object to their ideas being dismissed on the basis of their skin color.Kelefa Sanneh, a journalist and music critic, argues that DiAngelo "reduces all of humanity to two categories: white and other", and that she presents people of color as "sages, speaking truths that white people must cherish, and not challenge". Sanneh also criticizes what he sees as DiAngelo's tendency to be "endlessly deferential—for her, racism is basically whatever any person of color thinks it is".
Writing in New Discourses, religious and postmodernist studies researcher Helen Pluckrose and Jonathan Church opined that the notion of implicit bias underlying white fragility theory is "pseudoscience" and the theory itself fails due to the reification and ambiguity fallacies. Describing the theory as a :wikt:Kafkatrap|Kafka trap, they observe that "ny response to being told by DiAngelo that one is complicit in racism, apart from agreeing with her, is evidence of white fragility." The same point was raised by Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post, who writes: "any alternative perspective or counterargument is defeated by the concept itself. Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point."
In a 2020 op-ed for The New York Times, journalist and political correspondent Jamelle Bouie argued that the recent emphasis on exploring white fragility siphoned crucial energy from white people inwardly, towards their own behavior, instead of funneling resources and time into exploring wealth inequality and other harmful consequences of white supremacy.
Author and journalist Matt Taibbi spoke critically of the DiAngelo's coining of the term, suggesting it may be driven by economic self-interest: "A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts".