Catherine: I’m here with author, academic, and lecturer Dr. Robin DiAngelo, who will be giving a talk called “Seeing the Racial Water” at our upcoming conference. Robin, can you tell us a little about what first drew you to the field of multicultural education?
Robin: I applied for a job that I was in no way qualified for and that was as a diversity trainer, back in the early ’90s. I sincerely thought that it was a simple matter of open-mindedness and progressiveness. I was in for the most profound learning of my entire life on every level. For the first time, I was being challenged in a sustained way by a significant number of people of color on my racial identity, which I would not have even been able to tell you I had before that, right? I didn’t see myself in racial terms; I mean, that’s part of what it means to be white. I certainly understood somebody had race, but not really me. So that was the first level of challenge, just working side by side with people of color. I was like a fish being taken out of water; when you swim with the current, you’re generally not aware that there is a current there at all. Then I went into the workplace on interracial teams and tried to talk to primarily white groups of people about race, racial injustice, and basically what it means to be white, and the hostility and the resistance were unbelievable. At first I was pretty frozen in the face of it. I wasn’t particularly articulate myself, I was new on my learning curve. But over time, day in and day out over years, the responses were so predictable, they were almost scripted! I had enough of my own socialization to relate to these scripts, but had gained more critical insight. It was just a profound learning curve on every level and I felt very passionate about helping other white people be on that curve.
C: Can you tell us a bit about the talk you’re planning for our childbirth educators’ conference?
R: Well, race, racial relations, racism, and racial injustice are among the most sensitive and politically charged topics in our country. I actually think racism is the most complex and nuanced social dilemma of all. Yet when we have professional development on race and racism, we tend to focus on racial “others.” Of course, right there, that’s from the white viewpoint. We learn about this group or that group. You know, what are their struggles or their triumphs? What do we need to know when we work with them? But left so consistently unexamined is the question of struggles in relation to whom? Triumphs in relation to what? Who are we as we come together across racial difference? People of Color’s struggles don’t occur in a vacuum, we are in a relationship. I try to make the white side of the relationship, which is so rarely ever named, visible; reveal the currents in the water that we’re swimming in. And if we’re white, we’re swimming with the current. Yes, we are working, you know, if we’re swimming, we’re moving our arms, but the efforts of our work pay off very differently because we’re in the current. People of color are constantly swimming against the current, which has a very different impact on their efforts. We live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race, and yet most white people cannot answer the question “What does it mean to be white?” with any nuance or complexity. And while most white people cannot articulate with any depth what it means to be white, we are the overwhelming majority of people at the tables that are making decisions for people who are not at the tables. As we can see, this has disastrous outcomes because racial inequality is not getting better, and in many cases it is getting worse. Our good intentions, self-image, and friendliness are not making a difference. We really have to critically engage with how our race shapes us, because left unexamined, we will reproduce the racial hierarchy and inequality. So, my talk will focus on the majority of the people at the table. Of course, nearly everyone in the room will be white, but it’s also often valuable for people of color because so little validates or affirms their experiences, so it can be a useful way to understand why they are so often frustrated in their interactions with white people, particularly when the topic is race.
C: Many of our attendees may already be aware of your work as an author and lecturer on what you’ve coined “White Fragility,” but they may not be aware that you yourself were a childbirth educator for years before beginning your doctoral work in 2000. Did your background in our field in any way guide what you came to focus on later?
R: Yes, I grew up poor and working class, so I had not been to college. I took a childbirth class and it changed my life! The class was fantastic, and then my birth experience was incredible. I called my teacher, Carla Reinke, and I said “That education made all the difference. I want to do what you do.” Then I went through the training and I began to teach, but without a college degree I really couldn’t do much else. I wanted to be a high school sex educator, so I went to college in order to do that and of course ended up doing something very different. But actually, I think the aspect that was most relevant to the work I do now was watching the film “Birth in the Squatting Position.” Do you remember that film? That is when I truly understood the power of our cultural frames, that there’s not some fixed reality, right? I’d always thought that if you lined up five women from all over the world, from every different race, with different language bases, and they all had a baby inside, and the baby had to come out, it wouldn’t matter what their race or what their language was, that is a universally shared experience. That’s what I thought until I watched that film and it was one of the most profound ah-hahs of my life, which was “They don’t look like we look in childbirth!” That what we believe about birth shapes how we experience it and we live in a culture that absolutely emphasizes pain and that birth is a medical condition to be managed. And then we see what our outcomes are! That doesn’t mean that there is not pain, but the meaning of pain, the meaning we give that pain is profound. I think that fundamental understanding of culture and social construction and the sociology of experience is underneath everything I do around race and that came from that experience in childbirth education. I think we’re robbed. I absolutely respect any woman’s right to choose not to have children and I think it’s a courageous decision to make in this culture, but for women who make – or who are able to make – that choice, we are robbed of that power by these narratives. I actually get really angry, you know, when I read something like, “This is what it’s like to have a baby…” and then somebody takes a balloon and puts it over a watermelon and it tears. It’s just like why, why do we do this to women? Why terrorize them so that they basically say, “Put me unconscious!” And then there is the issue of handing our bodies over to men and how I feel about patriarchy. I was an angry feminist long before I had any idea of my own complicity in somebody else’s oppression. Being in that field certainly fuels your outrage at patriarchy, that’s for sure. I knew some educators that I didn’t think were that radical. There are a lot of childbirth educators that prepare parents for the experience that they’re going to have in the hospital, rather than prepare them to make really hard, informed choices.
C: We’ve heard you have a new book coming out this year. Can you tell us a little about it?
R: I do. It’s “White Fragility.” I wrote an article in 2011, a peer-reviewed academic article that went viral, and it just really resonated with people, that articulated the concept of white fragility, and so now I’m turning that into a more accessible book. Essentially, many of the dynamics in the outcomes of socialization that I will discuss in my talk set us up (those of us who are white) not to respond constructively when challenged around race. I often ask my audiences, “Have you ever noticed any white defensiveness on the topic of race?” and everybody laughs. White people tend to be very defensive. I mean, I might say that racism’s wrong, but if you ever try to point out a racist assumption or pattern that I personally have, you can expect that I’m going to get defensive and have hurt feelings and argue. It’s the lack of stamina to endure the discomfort of being racially challenged, because we move through a society in which we are racially insulated. Most of us who are white are comfortable racially virtually 24/7. We haven’t had to build our capacity for the discomfort that is absolutely necessary if we’re going to challenge the outcomes we keep getting, regardless of how open we feel as individuals. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is a sociologist who wrote a book called “Racism Without Racists.” His point was that nobody is racist anymore. Obviously, when I say that, we’re in a moment where a lot of people feel more comfortable being explicitly racist, but the average white person does not see themselves as racist, and yet our outcomes have not gotten better. We still have deep racial inequality across every institution in our society. We could predict whether someone will survive their birth by their race. I am confident that the majority of white people who will be sitting in the room the day of my talk will be thinking, “Well, I’m not the problem.” We’re the problem! And, White Fragility functions to protect the racial order and the white position within it, because we make it very difficult to talk to us about the inevitable absorption of a racist world view, that all white people have as a result of being raised in a society in which racism is the bedrock. We’re taught to think of racism as a very, very simple thing. A racist is an individual who does not like people based on race, knows it, and is mean to them. As long as that is my definition of a racist, I will not understand racism and I will not be able to look at my participation in the overall system. So, what I’m going to try to do in my very short time on such a complex and difficult topic is to help people see it as a system and help them consider what their role is in that system, because inaction really is a form of action. All our society needs for all these racially inequitable outcomes to continue is for the average white person to continue to just see themselves as very nice and open on race. That’s all you need to do, because then you won’t do anything to actively interrupt it. You won’t see it as your problem or see yourself as a part of the problem if you don’t understand that none of us could be exempt from its forces.
C: Well, Robin, that sounds great. We appreciate you taking time out to be part of our conference and look forward to hearing your talk on March 9th.
