white fragility is the defensiveness the argumentation the hurt feelings the withdrawal that often erupts whenever white people are challenged on their racial worldviews you know what this is a color free zone here Stanley I don't look at you as another race see this is what I'm talking about we don't have to pretend that we're color black that's fine and coherence with Maurey the fragility part is meant to capture how little it takes to cause white people to erupt in defensive nassif ensive nasaw traged all it functions as a kind of everyday white racial control by making it so difficult for people to challenge us on our unaware assumptions and biases then most of the time they don't and so it functions to keep everybody in their place and protect the racial hierarchy some defensiveness is natural you know it's a natural part of the process the key is that you must move through that defensiveness its defensive miss that functions to refuse to engage to protect a very limited worldview to let in no information or no challenge it serves us not to speak about it racism is the status quo it is the status quo of your society of my society of all Western oriented white sutler Colonials cultures and that status quo of racism is comfortable for me as a white person virtually 24/7 this country's judicial system has not been great for us here comes a two-hour lecture on black stuff god I wish my proxy were here go ahead so I am NOT gonna get to where I need to go from a place of white comfort I'm gonna have to get mighty uncomfortable in order to challenge that when somebody tells me that they don't see race I say I mean that's fine you know you can choose not to see the sky but it exists the number one question I'm asked is what do we do and before I answer that I want to offer a couple of challenges to that question because I find it a very problematic question so the first thing is to think long and deep about what it took for you to ask that question how in 2020 your question could be what do I do about racism how you have managed not to know and write down how you have managed to be a full functioning adult in 2020 and not know what to do about racism and everything you write down will be your map and nothing you write down will be easy to address but everything on it can be addressed and then get to work it's like saying I want to be in shape tomorrow you won't be in shape tomorrow and to get in shape will be a multi-part process after you've made that list one of the next things I would ask you to do is to take dr. Eddie Moore's 21-day challenge and read Leila Said's book me and white supremacy workbook both of those are active processes that will put you on the path what you can do is extend that privilege so that you can dismantle it right so you can you can create opportunity for people you can amplify issues and ways that other people can't and you can use your resources to create space for people [Applause] [Music] our voices have been missing from the table for far too long and by not talking to one another a couple of things are reinforced one we reinforce this idea that we're outside of race we continually put the burden the psychic energy of race onto people of color and most of the time we discount what they have to say you don't think you will ever change and write books that incorporate what white lives into them substantially you can't understand how powerfully racist that question is in you as you could never ask a white author we're gonna write about black you know I am NOT dismissed as being biased or playing the race card or having a chip on my shoulder when I challenge racism it doesn't mean I don't get dismissed but the impact of that dismissal doesn't hurt me in the same way that it hurts when we dismiss people of color this is the most complicated social dilemma of the last several hundred years we need many angles many approaches and many voices