INTRODUCTION
I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a
group of white people seated in front of us. We are in their workplace and
have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race.
The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just
presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that
whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man
is pounding his fist on the table. As he pounds, he yells, “A white person
can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see forty employees,
thirty-eight of whom are white. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he
being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why doesn’t he notice the
effect this outburst is having on the few people of color in the room? Why
are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or
tuning out? I have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism.White people in North America live in a society that is deeply separate and
unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation
and inequality. As a result, we are insulated from racial stress, at the same
time that we come to feel entitled to and deserving of our advantage. Given
how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we
haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized
sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to
ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We
consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very
identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect
us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense. The
smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable—the mere suggestion that....
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