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In this "vital, necessary, and beautiful book" (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and "allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people' (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

About the Author

Robin DiAngelo is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington. She earned a B.A. with a double major in sociology and history from Seattle University in 1991. She received her Ph.D. in multicultural education from the University of Washington in 2004, with a dissertation entitled "Whiteness in racial dialogue: a discourse analysis". In addition, she holds two Honorary Doctorates. Her area of research is in Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, tracing how whiteness is reproduced in everyday narratives. She is a two-time winner of the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. She has numerous publications and books, including Is Everybody Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Critical Social Justice Education, co-written with Özlem Sensoy, which received both the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award (2012) and the Society of Professors of Education Book Award (2018). In 2011 she coined the term White Fragility in an academic article which has influenced the international dialogue on race. Her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism was released in June of 2018 and debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List, where it remained for over three years and has been translated into 12 languages. Her follow-up book, released in June of 2021, is: Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. Her work or interviews have been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, and The BBC, among many other forums.​

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