What Is White Fragility, Anyway?
That essential question is directly answered in the form of metaphor:
“White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage.”
What Is Racism?
This is a question that receives several answers over the course of the book. The single best answer is not just metaphor, but not really even an answer as much as it is an assertion that explains why there are so many possible answers to the question that is posed:
“Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of our society. It is not limited to a single act or person.”
Racial Differences over What Constitutes Racism
The multiple answers offered to the question of what constitutes racism varies wildly, especially according to the race of the respondent. The author boils this down to a simile that many blacks and whites can likely understand:
“When I talk to white people about racism, their responses are so predictable I sometimes feel as though we are all reciting lines from a shared script.”
The Chicken or the Egg?
The author quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates, who observed that the slave trade flourished because Africans could be easily exploited as a resource that had nothing to do with their skin color. In this respect, racism is not wholly dependent on the issue of skin pigmentation. The separation of superiority from inferiority based on skin color grew out of that exploitation and thus:
“race is the child of racism, not the father”
Knowing Why the Caged Bird Doesn't Fly
Another quote is used to explicate the complicated nature of oppression; or, at least, the complicated nature of the perspective of being oppressed. Scholar Marilyn Fry explains it through a familiar metaphor in the African-American literature:
“If you stand close to a birdcage and press your face against the wires, your perception of the bars will disappear and you will have an almost unobstructed view of the bird. If you turn your head to examine one wire of the cage closely, you will not be able to see the other wires. If your understanding of the cage is based on this myopic view, you may not understand why the bird doesn’t just go around the single wire and fly away. You might even assume that the bird liked or chose its place in the cage."
