Op Ed Project

Thank you for your application to the Op Ed Project sponsored through CHI. We are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted to the summer program at a time and place aligned with your schedule. We understand the program has the capacity to be transformative, and we are so thrilled at your desire to share your perspectives and thoughts with a larger audience, and we look forward to reading and seeing your work in print in the future.

Below is the drafting of my first Op Ed.

White Fragility Disrupts Inclusivity

White people don’t know it but their fragility is an obstacle to opening up workspaces to inclusion.

Conversations about race and white privilege result in stress and defensive behaviors among white people. At the extreme, some people are incapable of having such conversations. In 2011, Robin DiAngelo termed this white fragility, and seven years later she wrote a book about it (“White Fragility), she defines it as a byproduct of a society that is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, such that they disintegrate at the first application of stress.

For the most part, diversity work is driven by quantifiable measures of, for example, how many people of color hires there are in a given year.  Quantifiable measures are more valued than qualitative experiences. Whiteness is safe in this space of numbers and measurable outcomes.

White fragility comes into play when the work moves beyond quantifiable measures to process and qualitative experiences and in this case, an internal look at how the organization is practicing inclusivity. More specifically, the implicit culture of an organization. Policies, practices, language and ultimately the style of leadership are ways to measure inclusivity. I recently had a coaching session with a client who was insistent on using the term “diverse professionals,” when I asked this executive to unpack this word and tell me what exactly they meant, they couldn’t. I have worked with white leaders in the non-profit world who enter communities of color with a sense of privilege and others who claim they do not see color at all.

When these practices are challenged by inclusion strategists, like myself, the focus switches from numbers to human experiences. Of course, a white person who feels insulted or stressed at the mention of race is more amenable to changed thinking than someone who feels no anxiety whatsoever at our country’s stained racial history and strained race relations. Still diversity becomes a white person’s check list instead of a deep dive into ways that whiteness and white culture is maintained in organizations, all protected and nurtured by white fragility.

My focus on inclusion is grounded in my professional and personal history. I am a Latina and Jewish woman of color, former associate dean, an associate professor of social work, a coach, a consultant. The ways in which I negotiate my identities as a woman of color from a multicultural and biracial history, positions me in a unique place. This is unique because I have lived on the borders of many identities. The combination of being both Jewish and Latina is an out of the box identity. Despite the saliency of cultural and national identity, women, like me, who locate themselves as having both a racial identity and a cultural identity are excluded by the limited and fixed constructions of race and culture. For example, the term Latina is used to describe a universal set of social experiences, thereby reducing identity to one’s perceived race and culture and assuming a commonality of experience based on appearance, mostly light-skinned and long blond or brown hair that is wavy. Natasha S. Alford discusses the inherent complexity of Latino/a identity in her recent op ed in the New York Times; Identity in an Instagram Feed. She discusses the sense of belonging and inclusion Afro-Latinas can gain through Instagram where as she states, she can “lose herself in photos that prove there’s a place she belongs.”

Inclusion and belonging are by products of confronting white fragility. White folks can start working on their fragility by first owning that being white affords one privileges. Recognize it and take this admission at face value without defending it or intellectualizing it or providing alternative oppression narratives to counter it. Second, connect it to the body with intention. Observe when fragility happens, what it feels like, where it lives in the body and interrogate that. Surround yourself with a supportive community of difference that has enough safety and trust to hold each other accountable and then slowly move into action personally and .

When white people get over their fragility, real change will start.