Read by: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Language: English
Length: 8 hours and 40 minutes
Publisher: Beacon Press Audio
Release date: 2021-06-29
New York Times Best Seller
Building on the groundwork laid in the New York Times best seller White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explores how a culture of niceness inadvertently promotes racism.
In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explained how racism is a system into which all White people are socialized and challenged the belief that racism is a simple matter of good people versus bad. DiAngelo also made a provocative claim: White progressives cause the most daily harm to people of color. In Nice Racism, her follow-up work, she explains how they do so. Drawing on her background as a sociologist and over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, she picks up where White Fragility left off and moves the conversation forward.
Writing directly to White people as a White person, DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and breaks down how well-intentioned White people unknowingly perpetuate racial harm. These patterns include:
DiAngelo explains how spiritual White progressives seeking community by coopting Indigenous and other groups’ rituals create separation, not connection. She challenges the ideology of individualism and explains why it is okay to generalize about White people, and she demonstrates how White people who experience other oppressions still benefit from systemic racism. Writing candidly about her own missteps and struggles, she models a path forward, encouraging white readers to continually face their complicity and embrace courage, lifelong commitment, and accountability.
Nice Racism is an essential work for any white person who recognizes the existence of systemic racism and white supremacy and wants to take steps to align their values with their actual practice. BIPOC listeners may also find the “insiders” perspective useful for navigating whiteness.
Includes a study guide.