I’m Rebecca Carroll - this is Come Through: 15 essential conversations about race in a pivotal year for America

In the summer of 2014, Michael Brown was fatally shot in the back by police in Ferguson, Missouri. My son was 7 years old at the time. We were sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon when he asked, “Mommy. Are you gonna to get shot?” Then he paused, the gears in his young brain turning. “Am I gonna get shot? Because we’re black?” He was inviting the conversation that all black parents have to have with their kids, especially their sons, before I’d even had time to prepare for it.

I told my son that police are more likely to profile and target black and brown people because of the color of our skin, yes. However, I said, that doesn’t necessarily mean we will get shot. I desperately hoped I wasn’t traumatizing him. But I also knew that I had to prepare him for this reality.

A few months later, my son, my husband, who is white, and I went home for the holidays to visit my family in New Hampshire, where I grew up. My adoptive parents are white. My brother and his wife and their children are white. My sister and her kids are white. The cashiers at the grocery store are white. The neighbors are white. Every car that drives by holds white passengers.

This was all I knew growing up. But it was a truly arresting moment when my son noticed it himself. On an earlier trip to New Hampshire, we were out to lunch with my parents at a local restaurant and he asked, “Mom, why is everyone here white?”

I felt both proud and gutted that my son had made the observation. Proud because I want him to recognize and understand that there is something very telling about an all-white environment, especially for us, as black folks. And gutted, because an all white-enviornment signals that we are not welcome, and that the people who choose to live in such all-white spaces are making very specific choices about their own lives and what matters to them. 

Choosing to live your life surrounded only by white people tells me that you're absolutely fine if you never interact with black people, and that you’re losing nothing. And that makes me sad. Because I lost a lot growing up in such an environment. And so did my white family.

During that holiday visit in 2014, the murder of Mike Brown and the fever and tenor of panic and anti-racist activism was still very fresh on my mind.

After dinner with my family one night, while my son played on the floor in the other room, and I sat in the kitchen with the adults, I mentioned this anxiety I felt - both for my son and the overall racial climate in the country. In response, my grown nephew, then in his mid-20s, said, very nonchalantly: “Well, if you go looking for it, you’re gonna find it.”

“It?” I asked. “What is IT? Murder? Violent racism?” My brother, who should have been the person to speak up, or say something to his son, did not. Instead, the room fell completely quiet. So I spoke up and said, “No, that’s not actually how it works. And to suggest that we ask for the racism we fall victim to, is racist.”

A few weeks later, I received a letter from my sister-in-law, by mail. She was furious with me for suggesting her son was racist, and told me it was “arrogant” and “impolite” to call attention to “race” so frequently.

I wrote her a long letter back. In it, I said that understanding race and racism is not about individual arrogance or politeness, and that she doesn’t need to put the word “race” in quotes. It’s a real thing. But her letter was not about race or understanding racism, it was about protecting her son. 

And I get that. I only wish she could understand that her protectiveness as the white mother of a white son is, in many ways, a privilege.

My sister-in-law was equating my pushback and discussions of racism with calling her son a “racist” — making him the victim. There’s a term for that. It was coined by author and diversity trainer Robin DiAngelo. It’s called White Fragility. And it’s everywhere.  

In 2018, Robin wrote a book by the same name and it became a New York Times bestseller. So, I invited her to come through and discuss not just the term, but what it means for white people to accept and own it.

Robin: Well, when I coined that term, the fragility part was meant to capture how little it takes to cause white people to melt down on racism, right? For many white people, just generalizing about white people, right?

Just proceeding as if you could say anything or know anything about people just because they're white, this will cause great upset and unsettlement. But the impact of that upset is not fragile at all. It's actually a pretty powerful means of every day racial control because it's, it becomes a kind of weaponized, hurt feelings and defensiveness that that pushes people of color into not challenging us or checking our assumptions or behaviors.

Rebecca: I mean, I think what that really, very much speaks to though is how white people sort of control the spectrum of emotion.

Robin: Yes, right. The irony, right, is the constant accusation that we level towards people of color about, you know, you're too sensitive, you're too angry. And yet you just barely scratch on the surface of a white person's, you know, worldview racially, and we erupt in upset and tears and anger and defensiveness.

Rebecca: And so, tell us about the book and how you arrived at a place where you decided you wanted to write it and really sort of spend time in this kind of space.

Robin: Well, I applied for a job many years ago, back in the 90s for what was then called diversity trainer. Didn't know what it was - sounded really cool.

Rebecca: What about it sounded cool though?

Robin: Oh, you're going to go into the workplace and you're going to lead workshops, you on acceptance and equity and racial justice and who doesn't enjoy that kind of thing. It's so interesting. And well, of course I'm qualified because I'm a vegetarian. How could I be racist?

You know, I had this just classic white liberal consciousness about all of this. And so I applied for this job, I got the job, and day in and day out, I was co-leading workshops for primarily white employees, but co-leading with always a person of color. And so it was kind of a parallel process.

And one was my own worldview being challenged by my co-facilitator. You know, part of being white is, I could be that far in life: I was college educated, I was a parent, I was in my thirties, but I had never had my racial worldview challenged.

Rebecca: That is just, I mean - I want you to keep going, but that is one of the things that I really, really struggle with the most. Which is that you see white folks who have reached this point 30, 40, 50 - of going to the right schools, of having all the right views and still having absolutely no idea how to have a conversation.

Robin: Well, I often say, if you are white and you have not devoted years of sustained study, struggle, focus, research, education, mistake making on this topic, your opinions are necessarily limited, superficial, uninformed and let's go for it – Ignorant. Because nothing in our society gives us the information we would need.

Now, it also serves us not to have that information - to be ignorant on racism. You know, that process that I was engaged in. Well, you know, part one was having my worldview challenged by people of color, but part two was trying to talk to white people about racism. And the hostility was jaw-dropping. Just years of it, it's so scripted.

The things that white people will say, the evidence we will give for why we're not racist. I mean, ridiculous things. Like: I've been to Costa Rica, I had a black roommate in college,, I speak several languages. I'm from Boston!

Rebecca: Well, Boston is not going to help you out at all.

Robin: It's, it's so scripted and yet so absurd.

And so just over the years I got better and better and better at - one, understanding how it works, and two - explaining how it works. And so, I wanted to really disseminate that more widely. So, I wrote this book,

Rebecca: So, what was it for you as a white woman that led you to do this work?

Robin: Yeah, that's certainly a question I've been asked, and one I've thought a lot about. I mean, some of it may be my basic orientation to the world that if I'm not growing and being challenged, I don't see a lot of meaning to life. That was a key piece.

I grew up in poverty and, you know, from a very early age, how had an acute sense that the world was not a fair place and that there was injustice. But, I only knew that from the position of, um, being treated unjustly. I had never considered how I treated others unjustly. How I benefited from somebody else's oppression.

Rebecca: So, it sounds like you're talking about compassion, right?

Robin: Uh, compassion. Empathy? I think so, yes. I'm only a little bit hesitant because I know it's popular for white people to say, Oh, the answer to racism is just opening your heart. I mean, it's a little more complicated than that, but yes. If you can't see the humanity in another person, you're not going to be motivated to challenge, you know, what is causing their suffering. Right? Particularly when it benefits you.

I mean, this is, this is a tight spot here, right? I believe that white people are invested in racial inequality. It serves us. It's comfortable. It helps us navigate the barriers that we do face. I mean, I grew up poor, but I was also white and that shaped how I experienced poverty and also how I navigated and left poverty.

I can't talk about growing up poor without also talking about growing up white.

Rebecca: So, you talk about white people being invested in racial inequality, and you talk about white people in in an us way. Are you invested in racial inequality? Is it central to the work that you do?

Robin: Well, to a degree, in the sense of never being complacent, right? That I am the least qualified to determine how well I'm doing with all of this because there are those investments. You know, many of them are unconscious. In no conscious, intentional way. Am I invested in racial inequality.

But I think at subconscious levels, I would have to be, and this is why it's not for me to assign myself the label anti-racist. That's for people of color to decide if at any given moment, I'm actually behaving in anti-racist ways. And so that's why we have to be accountable, right? We have to. You know, when people say: Oh you know, I'm not racist. It's like - how do you know? Do you, do you have any kind of accountable relationships with people of color? Do you talk about racism? Do you get feedback? How do you respond when you get feedback?

Robin: I'm just going to say this, I don't think most white people really care about racial inequality. You know, if you show me somebody being beaten in the street, I'll be upset about it. But you ask me to get rid of tracking and testing in schools. No, I want my child to have the best of everything and they can't have the best of everything, if somebody doesn't have access to everything, right? These are deep investments, and so we also have to look very, very deeply within us. That is going to be an emotional process. On some level, I think we need to ask ourselves, why are our hearts not breaking at this? What happened to us that we are so numbed to it?

Rebecca: And what level of empathy am I expected to employ for the moral trauma of white people?

Robin: I think that's a completely your choice on how you want to proceed with, with all of this. I think about it more as strategy. There are a range of strategies and, in some moments having empathy for our ignorance might be strategic and moving somebody forward, but it also may be strategic for your own mental health and, you know, longevity too say, no, that's not my struggle. You know, you work with your own, and I will focus on what I need to do

Rebecca: Because I do have to tell you that as a black woman, I found it really hard to get through the book. As I started reading it, it was sort of like, yeah, no, ah, and then, and then it's like, wait.

I have been saying this in one form or another for 30 years, but now we have this nice packaged book called white fragility by a white liberal woman who is now being heard. Now these things are being heard. So, it's a mixed feeling for me. Which is do I want ultimately for this to be out in the world? Yes, I do. Is it painful and frustrating to have to have it come through a white person? Yes, but also it should. You know, it's complicated.

Robin: You know, I'm very clear that my work centers whiteness, and reinforces the centrality of the white worldview. You know, as I stand on stages every day being granted credibility and authority to my voice, like virtually every other person put in front of all of us. Granted, credibility and authority. I am reinforcing and centering whiteness.

I see it as kind of the master's tools dilemma. Audrey Lord's beautiful quote, how do you dismantle the master's house, when you only have the master's tools? The way I reconcile that is that, it is a both end. Because to not use this platform, this voice, this credibility - to break with white solidarity and white silence for me is unacceptable. That would be to really be white. Right? And I like to be a little less white.

So, when I say I'd like to be a little less white - I do not mean a little more Italian American, or Irish American, or go find your roots, and that's the answer to racism.  When I say I'd like to be less white, honestly, for me, that means I want to be a little less racially oppressive. A little less racially ignorant, and a little less arrogant in my ignorance. A little less certain and more, more vulnerable and curious and open. And ultimately - actually engaged in anti-racist action and behavior.

Rebecca: So, I was going to say another issue or concern for me with the book and the way in which it's presented to white people as a tool to learn how to confront their own white privilege and fragility is that - in the past few years I've had white friendships, atrophy because of race and racism, and then had more than one of these former friends reach out to tell me that they've read your book and are now working on themselves. As if reading your book and telling me about it makes them good to go?

What do you think white people should do after they read your book? And especially in terms of difficult friendships, or encounters they've had with black folks or people of color in their life?

Robin: Well, I'm actually glad that you're bringing that up, and naming that because, if you've ever been to workshops and professional development on these topics. There's, often way that people close those by going around the room, and  what's one thing you're going to do different as a result of this? And so consistently -  white people will say: I'm going to keep reflecting on this. I stopped asking that question cause I, I kinda couldn't stand that.

I began to respond well, okay, and tell me, how will people of color know that you've continued to reflect on this? Can you make an appointment in which you're going to come back and tell us the results of you having reflected, right? It's functionally meaningless to understand this without actual action.And of course, you don't really understand it if there isn't action.

And I want to be really clear, you can never understand racism without listening to the voices of people of color. But if my book helps till the soil, if it helps soften the ground a little bit, because as an insider. I mean, I do have an understanding of whiteness and white fragility that you can't have.

Right? I mean, I think you'll, you understand it to a degree that I never will. I mean, your whole life you've been dealing with it, and yet I do have a piece that you don't have. And so I'm hoping -  one that that's actually useful for people of color who are reading the book. But for white people, if this is what it takes to get them to understand enough to keep going, and then begin to engage with the work of people of color, then I think that's an accomplishment. 

Rebecca: So, after white people finish reading your book - what is that you want them to be thinking about?

Robin: What does it mean to be white? The average white person cannot answer that question. And if I can't tell you what it means to be white, I cannot hold what it means not to be white.

I'm going to have no critical thinking on this topic. I'm going to have no skills to navigate this conversation, and I'm going to have no emotional capacity to withstand the discomfort of this conversation. And what that means is: you can't engage with us on this issue and that people of color and from all the, all the folks that I've talked to spend an inordinate amount of energy tiptoeing around delicate white sensibilities, and not bringing their authentic selves into the conversation, because they risk more punishment if they do.

Rebecca: Oh, for sure. So, you said that you grew up in an urban neighborhood, which I presume to mean – a neighborhood where there were black and Brown people, yes?

Robin: Yes.

Rebecca: And as a child, did you play with those folks?

Robin: I did.

Rebecca: Then you did not maintain friendships with those folks?

Robin: No, we moved away. Then, as my father's finances improved, we moved to more suburban and whiter spaces and I wasn't encouraged to maintain those relationships.

Rebecca: And is that racist?

Robin: I would say that one of the most powerful messages of white superiority is the sense that there's absolutely no loss in a segregated life for white people. That that most white people can go cradle to grave with few, if any, authentic, sustained cross racial relationships and with black people in particular.

 And no one suggests they've lost anything of value. In fact, that will be the measure of the value of their schools and neighborhoods is the absence of black people. That is a powerful message. You know, nobody has to come out and say anything explicitly, but we all know what a good neighborhood is, and a good school, and we know what makes it good. And every moment that we reinforce that, we are internalizing the message of white supremacy.

Rebecca: I would argue that for white people to reconcile with their part in white supremacy and racism. Subtle, and or not subtle, it requires sort of tapping into these kinds of knee jerk reactions, right? The guilt, the shame, the defensiveness, which makes for very messy - like a real messiness.

But I think that it's a requirement to stay in that messiness, in order to be accountable. Do you talk with, with folks about that? How to stay in those feelings?

Robin: Yeah. You know, when we’re doing a workshop or something? And there'll be a point where I say: about right now you're probably thinking - my goodness, there's nothing I can say and get this right.

And then, you know, people laugh and I say, and that's true. There is nothing you can say and get this right. Not by everybody, that's for sure. But that can never be the reason we don't keep struggling to get it a little more.

And I want to say something about guilt since you raised that. I've been, you know. Uh, accused on occasion of trading in guilt. I sincerely don't struggle with guilt. It's just not useful. I did not choose to be conditioned into white supremacy. I wouldn't have chosen that. But I was. It’s as Ibram Kendi says: we are not the producers of racist ideology, but we are all the consumers.

I was fed it. I consumed it. I don't feel guilty about that. What I feel is responsible for the outcome of having been socialized into white supremacy. There's an outcome, and it's on me to identify how I've been shaped by it and what that outcome is, but not if I've been shaped by it. And guilt, I think it's a natural part of coming to consciousness about this, but you have got to move through it as a white person or it functions beautifully to immobilize and protect your position.

Rebecca: How can you know that you wouldn't choose it?

Robin: Oh, that's a great question. Um, gosh.

I'm just pausing because I'm imagining somebody saying, would you like to be conditioned into feeling superior to somebody else? And I'd like to think I'd say no.

You know, I, I'm thinking about, um. From the, even before I took my first breath, the forces of racism were shaping my life, so that we could literally predict whether my mother and I were going to survive my birth. I mean, that's how deep the forces of racism are. And I've never been outside of white supremacy, right?

And I'm thinking back to that powerful question you just asked, would I have chosen it? What I can say is that as someone who very early understood that we lived in patriarchy, that it was better to be a boy as defined by society then than a girl. I did have that sense of injustice towards me and you add the classism piece. I think the key is using that as a way in, not a way out.

So, I want to take this opportunity to say, white women, stop using sexism to protect your racism. White women, we do not have less racism or less racial privilege because we experienced sexism and misogyny, right?

The key is use your understanding of your own marginalization to then challenge your complicity with somebody else's.

That’s Robin Diangelo - she’ll talk about how white fragility is playing out in the white house - in just a minute.

Rebecca: How helpful do you think anti-biased training is? How effective?

Robin: Um. Without sustained focus and work, it's not very effective.

In the 90 minutes, I typically have, giving a keynote order or whatever. I want to overwhelm white people with evidence that pushes them out of denial. That not only is there something going on, but they've been thoroughly shaped by it.

They are not exempt from any of this, regardless of how many languages they speak. And I want to help them see something that they didn't see before, but they cannot unsee it. And that is so uncomfortable that they see it, that they are motivated to keep going, but without that motivation, it won't really have much impact.

Rebecca: I think a lot about what it looks like for a white person to understand their privilege. And I think about my husband, who is white. There's a lot of moments when I see it in his language, his behavior, his deference. He's also a scholar. He was on his way to a conference on race when we met and said it like he was going to the store to pick up bread.

Which again, makes me wonder slightly if there's a certain kind of pragmatism that needs to be in place to reach this work, or to tap into this work. Where a white person can actually get their whiteness, but I wondered, what does white accountability look like to you?

Robin: I think he could say it casually because he's operating from the premise that structural racism exists, he’s embedded in that structure, he’s been shaped by it. He has racist patterns and perspectives, and he is working on it. But you, you asked about accountability and I'm sure the ways that I seek to be accountable, which may answer that question. One is that I do donate a percentage of my income to racial justice organizations led by people of color.

And in particular, Brian Stevenson's, Equal Justice Initiative. I have a circle of white people with a strong anti-racist analysis that I can go to, to process feelings so that I'm not running those by people of color. That I can, you know, talk through struggles with. I also have a group of people of color who have agreed to kind of coach me.

I pay them for that time, or if they say: no thank you, you're my friend, then I donate for the period of time we spent to racial justice organizations. I do a lot of pro bono work for people of color led organizations. Promote the work of people of color, et cetera. I'm just trying to give you an example, right?

Ibram Kendi says, that a racist policy is any policy that results in a racially unequal outcome. And by that measure, virtually all policies in all our institutions are racist. So, another way to be accountable is pushed to get those policies back on the table, push to keep them on the table when everybody wants them off the table, and really just start doing the work of addressing those outcomes.

Rebecca: Right so, I think about my parents and as I referenced earlier, they are white. And you know, I think they would have considered themselves, in fact – they do consider themselves, and have I've doubled down a million kajillion times about how liberal and progressive, they are. They thought the world was changing when they adopted me, blahzay, blah. And then they chose, they chose to raise a black child in an all-white rural town – which is just absurd to me.

Robin: I mean, of course they meant well, but a lot of parents raise children of color, white parents raised children of color with this kind of you are special, don't let anybody tell you you're not, et cetera. And you know that's true. But at the same time, it's a colorblind approach, because there's also something going on that you are experiencing and they're denying its going on.

So that that can be very problematic. I don't know if you relate to that, but that's what I have heard.

Rebecca: Yes, I do relate to that, but I also, what I, what I think  resonated more with me was that there are white folks who are willing to go cradle to grave without having any real sustained complex relationships, cross racial relationships and not understanding the loss of that.

And so for me, applying that, in my case, for them to think that there wasn't a great loss for me to not be around my people. And I say it, to sort of knowing that conversations around interracial adoption as they reach sort of higher profiles, like Colin Kaepernick, who was adopted and raised in a white family, and now is in this moment of about as black as he can be.

I say it because I think it is an important conversation within this framework of white supremacy and the ways in which white parents, who are well-intended, raised black and brown children.

Robin: Well, you are making me realize is that, most white people, they're not going to get out of our comfort zones, and get outside of segregated environments.

And yet that was imposed upon you. Right. It wasn't valuable for you to be around people that reflected your experience, but white people don't question, that we would ever step out of our comfort zone and be around people who don't reflect our experience.

Rebecca: And I think, you know, a lot of times white people try to remedy, you know, these or push back on these kinds of, um, accusations.

Do you think that there's a way for good white liberals to get it without then replicating sort of power dynamics and structures that serve them and that are inherently racist?

Robin: Probably not. Right? I mean, I think it's always going to be a both end. Right? And this is where I can think about, about men and sexism. I mean, there's never a moment outside of the message that it's better to be male than female. Right. I think that's why you see so few white men involved in racial justice work, or certainly,  you don't see them involved in work that's seeking to challenge patriarchy.

It's just - there's just kind of not a motivation or an interest. There's a kind of apathy. But I thought about the word you mentioned, accused, right? White people often feel accused, and that word for me reveals that we fundamentally don't think it's possible for us to be racist.

Accused is kind of like a false thing, right? You're falsely and unfairly charged with something. And when you start from the premise that, of course I have these patterns and perspectives, you don't respond as if something is an accusation.

You actually potentially respond with - this was a gift, thank you. I would not have seen or known or understood this without you giving me this. And it was a huge moment of trust and risk across a deep history of harm, for you to have given me this feedback, because - you know, let's face it - it rarely goes well.

I mean, I often ask this question, I've been asking you for 20 years. It's kind of a facetious question to people of color in my sessions. How often have you attempted to give a white person feedback on their inevitable and often unaware racist patterns and perspectives? And how'd that go well, for you?

Rebecca:  Never.

Robin: Exactly! That is the number. I would just want all the white listeners to just hear that the number one answer is never.

The number two is rarely. It's like God, you know, we just can't get there from the current paradigm that says: only mean intentional people could ever participate in racism.

Rebecca: Speaking of the current paradigm and mean people, the president, is an openly white supremacist. And so, what connections would you make between the president and white fragility?

Robin: Well, the first thing I want to say, something maybe provocative, is I don't actually think that the president is more racist than I am. So, I mean, he's older than me, but we grew up in the same culture. We absorb the same water. There's nothing that comes out of his mouth I haven't heard before.

Do you think I have not been exposed to those stereotypes about Mexicans, for example? Right. There is a difference between us, although. And that is that he embraces, and amplifies, and uses his platform for those to amplify that racism. And I seek to challenge that racism. I'd like to think that I use my platform to challenge racism, but I don't think it's useful to set him up as the racist and me not. That invokes what I call that good-bad binary.

And that. That just has me feeling complacent. Yeah, I'm not like he is. I'm not what I call an avowed racist, but that doesn't mean - this is one of the reasons I say that I think white Progressive's actually caused the most daily harm. Right? On a daily basis. You are unlikely to interact with the Richard Spencers of the world, right?

And I would imagine coming across a Richard Spencer may be a little bit unnerving. Uh, although many people of color said, no, give me Richard Spencer. I know where he's coming from, I know how to protect myself. The white progressive, who I am interacting with every single day - in my workplace, in my, you know, community, smiling in my face, undermining me at every turn. Right? That's much more treacherous.

Rebecca: The idea of Richard Spencer being more, I don't know if palatable is the word, but, but easier to, um, confront or manage than a good white liberal. Is that your, is that your opinion or is that something you have witnessed?

Robin: I would say it's a combination. But mostly it's from feedback that I, I have heard for all the years that I have been in this work. Of black people in particular saying, give me the old school, southern racist any day. That moving to the North, for example, is much more, confusing and gaslighting.

It's harder to get your hands on, and harder to navigate, and it will not be admitted to. That in some ways just somebody kind of: Yup, yup, we're, we are better than you – I mean, at least there it is. But there is a daily experience that - I don't wanna speak for you or presume, but I imagined that on a somewhat daily basis, you are aware that you experienced racism in the, in your daily environment. And who is in your daily environment?

Rebecca: Robin, I work in public radio. Okay.

Robin: So you see, I was just stumbling around trying to come out and say this. Do you see what I mean? Like when you go home each day, you may do it on a daily basis or the days that you do having to decide is it worth it?

To try to challenge this thing that was said or done. Is it worth it to do that, right? And all that energy that it takes to agonize about whether you should just put up with it and endure it and get, you know, get through the day or whether you should challenge it. You're agonizing around white progressives.

Rebecca: How do you see whiteness and white fragility playing out in the, in this election and this, this run up?

Robin: Well, there's a few things in a sense that I never really thought in my lifetime. I would hear a reparations being discussed on a debate stage with complete, you know, legitimacy and actually a fairly eloquently from a few folks, right?

So, there are moments of amazing progress in that way. This is where I feel I can feel frustrated with the left, right. That, that the critique can be so nuanced, that nobody can get it right. And there's a little bit of, it feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water, right?

So, can people have space to mess up and grow? So, it's good that candidates are being held accountable for their relationships and with their past things, but when they do a fairly good job of acknowledging and repairing, can they also be allowed to move forward?

Rebecca: Do you feel hopeful?

Robin: Um, I see emotions as political. So, when you asked me if I feel hopeful, right. I'm aware that I am being asked, as a white person, about whether I'm hopeful about racism. Right. And so there are consequences to the emotions I have. Do I struggle with hopelessness? Yes. Do I think that most white people don't really care.

Yes. I hope that offends your listeners, so they prove me wrong. But I think that most white people, at the end of hearing something like this, are just going to continue to smile and be nice and friendly and see themselves as being covered. And I'm very clear that, as a white person, I cannot go to hopelessness. That it can only serve the racist status quo, so I don't get to go there.

Right. You know how you navigate hopelessness is a different thing, but for me as a white person, I can't stay there. I just have to keep pushing.

Rebecca: Thank you for taking the time and coming through. Coming through!

Robin: Thanks for the honor of inviting me.

You just heard me talking with Robin DiAngelo - her book is White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Come Through is a production of WNYC Studios.  Christina Djossa and Joanna Solotaroff produce the show, with editing by Anna Holmes and Jenny Lawton Our technical director is Joe Plourde, and the music is by Isaac Jones. Special Thanks to Anthony Bansie.

I’m Rebecca Carroll - you can follow me @Rebel19 for all things Come Through - and, please share, review and rate us. Thanks - until next time!