Dialogue Description:

White Fragility is defined by scholar Robin DiAngelo as “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation (2011).”

In this dialogue, we would like to grapple with the many questions alive for us about white fragility in this political moment. With the rise of this term ‘white fragility’ in popular consciousness, especially with DiAngelo’s recent book, we want to consider together how to confront and transform white fragility in our bodies, relationships, movements and communities. White Noise Collective has been offering workshops on Antidotes to White Fragility, and notice that the workshop space has surfaced many questions about how to name and frame white fragility towards collective liberation. Haven’t heard of this term ‘white fragility’ til this moment? Been to multiple Antidotes to White Fragility workshops? This dialogue is for you. We welcome a range of relationships and experiences with the concept and WNC’s engagement with it.

Some guiding questions:

  • If an alien life were to visit earth in a liberated future, how might one of our descendants communicate with this alien being how we transformed patterns of so called ‘white fragility’? As our liberated descendant shares the stories of how we got there, what are the tools and practices that supported shifts on the collective level and across generations? (Shout out to adrienne maree brown on Podcast How to Survive the End of the World for the seed idea for this question)
  • White fragility interacts with our nervous systems, and moves inside of bodies. Therefore, we understand our interventions to it must incorporate the body, and the way a sense of “perceived threat” arises within those of us who are white. In our workshops, we have gotten feedback that people struggle to hold the necessity of body-based work, involving slowing down and grounding, with the immediacy and urgency of violence directed structurally against communities of color. In this political moment, how do we name, frame and transform white fragility while holding the complexities of structural violence and trauma?
  • Many of us have heard connections drawn between white fragility and “white women’s tears”. How do we practice inviting our fullest humanity as white people dedicated to racial justice and collective liberation by honoring emotionality (whether or not we are women) while attending to impact? What are strategies to engage white fragility as a concept that honors the many raced, classed, gendered, abled, aged elements of who we are, rather than a reductive “right/wrong” binary of how to show up as white people?

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Check-in: what brings you here? Transforming white fragility towards collective liberation

 

  • Trauma sticky space – we have talked about fragility as a nervous system response, always interested in learning more about nervous systems. My resistance to talking about white people feelings.
  • Have written about white fragility, emotionality and trauma response – wants to keep developing
  • Reading the Hemphill reading brought up feelings! Trying not to feel my feelings when the world is ending. Now reawakening feelings.
  • Suspicious at growing comfort with feeling discomfort with exploring white fragility with white people
  • Desire to sit and listen and shake things up
  • Incredible power of defensiveness to shut things down, even very subtle defensiveness
  • Been reading White Fragility book, had experiences of transformative power of somatics in a therapeutic context, curious about how it can be brought to bear on this
  • Want to be in absorptive mode
  • More comfortable being a warrior/fighter person than acknowledging to myself white fragility behaviors. Loved the fragility workshop, wanting to deepen.
  • Have read and reflected on DiAngelo’s book, excited to be in this space to learn more
  • I teach a lot of classes on race and racism, realized recently have plateau-ed in where i am pushing myself, wary of my comfort in these topics
  • Graduating soon and wanting to bring this dialogue out of academic space
  • Looking forward to taking myself out of the classroom and being in spaces like these
  • Excited to meet people doing this work, have been studying on my own. I put up a FB post question asking who is doing this work and was disappointed at the low responses
  • How to talk with people and speak up at my waitressing job, and to challenge it in myself
  • Here for the company and to absorb and continue the conversation
  • Wrote master’s thesis on antidotes to white fragility, have been working with WNC, recently was in space of conscious folks doing this work, immersed in somatics, and the subtle not conscious fragility in the room made me really angry
  • The angle of nervous system resonates – this is how i have been describing my responses when i do things i don’t want to do
  • I feel ill-equipped to address my somatic responses. Was thinking about some of my defensiveness manifests in other parts of my life, also as result of white culture, wanting to make changes across my life
  • This conversation has been really relevant in a number of communities, wanting to understand more about triggers
  • Realizing i haven’t really felt the impacts of training, feeling constantly too small and inadequate to the task
  • Glad to have body and heart incorporated
  • New to this work, did short SURJ workshop
  • Have been active in different circles of white people and multiracial groups reckoning with whiteness
  • Currently in somatic training and feel dedicated to how this aspect of human experience, racial identities in society are being lived out through our bodies, determined and committed to learn ways of being with that, myself and others, in therapeutic ways, looking for community to do that with
  • Inspired by work looking at how racial trauma lives in the body, and ways that culture plays a part in this healing, curious about white culture that can be healing – not just shame, fear and guilt – something to be a part of
  • Want to become aware of my blind spots
  • Trying to understand race dynamics is new to my life, i’m mixed race and an ID i’ve been trying ot understand my whole life, trying to figure out intersectionality. I invited a mixed race friend, we had very different feelings about comfort in this space. I feel that other mixed race people negate the white side of themselves. Have white passing privilege. Distinct experience in different racial spaces, code-switching, didn;t realize that it is a skill set i’ve had since i was young, out of necessity
  • I’ve been talking about white fragility with POC, not yet with white folks
  • I have a solid foundation, want to keep developing my skill set to challenge white folks
  • Navigate a lot of spaces of trauma around addiction. I have been really frustrated with the whiteness of healing spaces
  • Want to go back to practical forms of “stamina”,
  • Isolation as another aspect of white fragility, where shutting down means that you don’t actually get to process, what happens when somebody else shuts down and I still need to process or someone else in the space still needs to process
  • Subtle comfort with work facilitating white folks around white supremacy culture
  • Fragility of white institutions — both in spiritual institutions and as a scientist, see fragility manifesting in these settings
  • Curious about how we talk about white fragility and also how do we show white fragility
  • How do we transform nervous system response?
  • What would we say to an alien life form who dropped down to planet earth in the future about how we’ve overcome white fragility
  • Threads:
    • different dimensions of embodiment, how this can be a tool to take us into different responses and choice
    • power of subtle defensiveness
    • white fragility and how it lives in white culture/institutions
    • Shame and guilt, shutting down breaking ability to have a process, what processing does for white fragility
    • People in transition in their lives, seeking to listen and be in the presence of people with shared commitments to racial justice
  • What is an actual practice in real-time? How does this build the muscles we need to create a space of safety, or not such a fragile space?
  • Can someone share some of the ways they do process white fragility?  What kinds of things can come up in a working context or with friends?
    • Tools for processing either for yourself or with a group?
    • Different based on circumstances
    • Trauma-activated spaces: If I’m having my own white fragility response, especially in reaction to someone else having their own white fragility response, I usually pause on having a conversation until my own emotional access needs are met, usually by calling a friend
  • So much patience for your own learning curve, because if you get impatient it takes longer
  • When you can, phone or text a friend if the relationship is regulating for you, not necessarily just someone who will say “you are doing a great job”
  • Most of my patterns of reactivity around race/racism aren’t different than how I react in other attachment related situations, so anything that you learn in any therapy or school context to regulate yourself is an awesome tool specifically for white fragility
  • If you are able to stay in your body and available to someone else’s experience that is deeply undermining to white fragility
  • Constantly remind myself to be curious; a pattern is that I have a desire to be the good white person that corrects other people; reclassify this reaction as white fragility; step back, get curious, ask myself what assumptions I’m making about them, getting curious about the interaction before just jumping in, what is my experience right now and my reaction and where is that coming from?
  • Not thinking about what to say to correct them or educate them but how to ask them a question
  • Having developed skills that are based on a bedrock understanding of myself outside of a specifically racial justice context — attachment, self-worth, trauma, etc. — so you have a user’s manual for yourself
  • If we all develop a deep self-knowledge of how we work somatically, bodily; this is almost everything in terms of being able to engage effectively and not deploy white fragility behaviors
  • What sense of self is being triggered here?  What element of my self-concept is being questioned now?  Is that sense of self-concept useful now? If not, bring awareness and put aside.  For example, if sense of white savior is being questioned, maybe this isn’t helpful and can be set aside
  • Can’t force someone to face their own white fragility, but I can give them the choice — “hey, I noticed this thing, are you available to talk about this right now?”
  • With effort we may not know what kind of impact we’ve had but the effort still matters
  • Feel my feet, try to push through my toes and the bottom of my feet
  • Feel the weight of my body and where it is making contact with the earth; feel the earth supporting me, the earth is actually holding me, that is huge for me in these moments of activation
  • Had to learn what it feels like when I’m activated — learning to recognize that was huge
  • when i feel something harmful happening in the space and i want to show up to it, how can i make contact with this? Contact with this person, this behavior, this harm, pattern of collective body
  • Connecting is crucial
  • good/bad dichotomy, wanting to make other people bad
  • Fascists are trying to protect their identity – edgy to acknowledge pattern we may have in common, trying to figure out piece of what i identify with when someone is acting something out. Part of me is rigid, fearful of others, try to keep that tamped down and not look at it – when it comes up feels like i am not worthy of love
  • Parts work: We have many parts, sometimes different ones run the show
  • How present moment of activation speaks to stories, ways that we experience parts/stories of myself, when i am not in my activated space, how do we deal with activation in the moment and the long term work of rewiring the stories, the stories available to us, the connection to culture – was always aware of race form when i was young, the story of white people are fucked up was always present, we are/i am the evil ones, when i think about symptomatic responses, i cannot deal with that identity that i hate so much inside myself, being evil, don’t deserve love or to be in relationships
  • Our dialogue on aspirational white identity, i also look up to people – i believe in your love, your love for this world, for people – a new story, an identity i can get in and through, in these spaces i get to experience that, the full humanness of that and that reclamation, for the long term healing
  • Feeling churning quality in my solar plexus. Being told to “chill” when i’m activated feels like at times part of white supremacy culture, not feel feelings fully. When i’m fragile i can’t handle what i’m feeling and have to turn it off – not shut down but open up
  • I have a somatic therapist who will ask, what is happening now? And i’ll come out with a narrative, like oh i’m not good at this thing – and then she’ll say if it’s not that, then what? There’s something a little off to the side, what is it? When i say “i love justice”, my body resonates. I think of the alien, and what is to the side that doesn;t close us down.
  • “Window of Tolerance” – we can fall into this dichotomy of i can have all the feelings or none – where is the space that the emotions make me feel unconnected to other people, that space is where white supremacy operates, also makes memory hard – hard to then hold accountable. That genre of feeling-state makes learning and connecting hard, how can i bring myself time down a bit yet stay engaged with feelings and awareness of activation. What is my deepest commitment right now? That is regulating. If protecting myself is the most important thing in a moment, maybe i should remove myself – if that part of me is driving, then i need to stop the car, go to the bathroom and regroup
  • Notice how you are doing, how it feels to be here. Have you noticed yourself throughout this conversation leaning in or leaning back?
  • Walking through my most “I am the best anti-racist person vibe”, I shouldnt have to dissociate with you all to get there.
  • Part of a group that is anonymous, and we talk about not taking ourselves so seriously
  • Window of tolerance, what is intolerable? D’angelo definition that a minimum amount of stress is intolerable, and that evades accountability and presence.
  • What makes something intolerable? Some degree of threat is too destabilizing.
  • Talking about fascists, intolerability is not so much about the specificity of the emotions that d’angelo lays out, but here it’s about not being in any way associated with other white people.
  • Restorative justice circle- simple and powerful. Feelings, impacts and needs.
  • Amazing to feel, even though some pretty catastrophic stuff came up, the next day I felt so serene. Very present with the heartbreak, but felt deep ease and resilience, and presence for folks who are devastated.
  • Storm could through the room, and yet it kept moving. Could say things in the room that I avoided for years. Feeling that saying things
  • White folks do need to have a place to come undone, and devastated, and come apart, where POC are not doing any of the caretaking.
  • For myself I worry about what happens to my mental health, when I don’t have time to go into mourning, grief etc. also as a way to regulate related to racism and gender violence
  • The person who guided us, had us commit to values, and the commitment to stay was a value. When there is not a commitment to stay people try to go around.
  • Freedom from defensiveness
  • I cannot imagine the exhaustion POC feel around white defensiveness, whether overt or subtle.
  • Like in our workshop we make shapes around fear, anger, but also checking out. And Im struck by all the ways people check out and how strong that defensiveness.
  • White supremacy linked to colonialism, deep intergenerational trauma around exile and exclusion.
  • Assimilation, idea of whiteness, the sacrifice and the work to create whiteness, and what it has taken to hold that in our bodies, the deep fear.
  • My ancestors worked so hard to get under the veil of whiteness and safety, and how that juxtaposes with white violence, and how does that relate to intergenerational trauma, story
    • Belonging and safety, desire for connection and sense of purpose across bodies and relationships.
  • Belonging we need to find in another way, impulse embedded in the body.
  • What does it look like to shift that? Build the capacity to stay? Build a culture that actually wields those tools, simple yet profound (like Restorative Justice).
  • How hard it is for white people to make connections to each other, around race. Observing certain religious communities that have an amazing sense of belonging, but also has otherness and boundaries.
  • How to create a sense of inclusiveness despite difference
  • I’m gonna have your back when you lose your job for instance.
  • Moments in which I feel angry with other white people, thinking about meditation about where we are coming from and where we are going. Having compassion for where I was in grappling
  • Something that White fragility I encounter, people think racism is individual, intentional and conscious. So could we tell the alien that it isn’t that. That people were feeling like they needed to charge and protect their goodness. We were swimming in this ocean of white supremacy. It isn’t conscious for most people I know, though it does have an impact.
  • Not about the good and bad binary. Its about the system, I had breakfast with uncle on my white, not asian side, and my uncle started asking honest questions. He asked about trying to understand the discourse of white supremacy. I felt like I couldn’t do it, he wanted to know cause his granddaughter is mixed race. The fact that he is curious is good. Hard to move past peoples defensiveness. Need to learn not to get defensive myself as well. Appreciate the vulnerability that is happening in this space.
  • A meditation practice that helped me, I felt like I screwed up and wanted to make meaning out of it. The word forgiveness came to me a couple times, never thought I needed to do a forgiveness practice. It ended up being an important bodily shift. It made me recognize the deep self hatred that I had around whiteness and not being able to get rid of it. Larry yang does great talk and resources around forgiveness. Importance of forgiveness for transforming shame.
  • Fragility is suffering and the response to suffering is tenderness
  • Intention to create responses to needs that I need and other need to create more spaces where white people can come undone and finding compassion for self and others
  • Burned out so hard, and feel grateful to come back in and reinvigorating my learning process
  • Gratitude for this space, work being done and being mixed race and in that bridge space, and expressing that this work is being done to my POC friends.
  • My body knows how to connect and I can remember how to feel and listen to the wisdom of my body.
  • Commitment to come back and do more of this. Really appreciate the talk about somatics and think it is really important
  • I feel proud of myself because I feel like I’ve been present. Feel grateful to be in a different place now and not be triggered by a space that is predominantly of white women
  • Conversation with a friend around cultural diversity, we all have incredible stories, ways to engage that.
  • Asking yourself the question about what sense of self is being triggered right now?
  • The exposure to all the language. Personally committed to this idea that one never truly arrives. The plateau.
  • Feeling the importance of staying connected to relationships, keep growing and resourcing
  • Trying to figure out how to think about the connections of the white fragility response, how it may seem like its connected to one thing I did, but how it might connect to giant connect to giant histories for trauma that me and my people have not accounted for.
  • Tell the alien that we created spaces where we got together and practiced grappling, and also do reparations
  • Commit to come back to another one, preferably next month
  • Echo gratitude, everyone sharing. Committed to untangling the dichotomy of good vs. bad. We all need to have feeling but at what point is it unproductive and disconnected
  • This conversation can take many forms and this is one of them
  • Deep sense of othering that whiteness and white supremacy is built on, and not all of them are not really obvious.
  • Intention to develop friendships and reached out to them. People who will hold me accountable with care.
  • Shifting my emotional regulation from repression to processing and presentness.
  • Group as being a nervous system with a great capacity and not refusing my grief
  • Feeling very grateful for the capacity of this nervous system, resilient rich feel that this can handle that I couldn’t on my own
  • The feltsense of being disconnected from self and other and earth is what keeps white supremacy in place
  • Rich prompts to keep friends close, to turn toward shining a light on how white supremacy is operating.
  • Practices that strengthen that, white people as we are socialized with a lack of stamina, is not bad inherently it is about a lack of practice. Expanding the collective window tolerance
  • What can we do today so that tomorrow we can do what we are unable to do today? – Paulo Freire
  • Particular strategy to link individual practice to culture shift – part of me gets uncomfortable and fired up about material realities, i get excited about what this looks like at scale – when we tell the alien about the trajectory that makes this possible
  • Thinking about fractals, as amb talks about, my lack of practice is still reflected in cyclical state – feeling energized to practice more
  • It is true that our culture of dissociation and alienation what maintains systems of white supremacy
  • How can i hold this space not for myself but for others to help name and open curiosity when fragility is up in them/in the room
  • Feeling my revolutionary ancestors, what we make possible in the face of my own hopelessness, wanting to leave a legacy worth fighting for

 

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