Is this inappropriate-school district requiring teachers to read White Fragility?

[Anonymous]

Our school district is requiring that all staff members read White Fragility. Not sure how I feel about this. The title is rather off-putting.

[Anonymous]

You, honey, are the definition of white fragility.

[Anonymous]

If they employ you and give you paid time to read it,.they can ask you to read anything. Why don't you read it and then decide you feel?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You, honey, are the definition of white fragility.

LOL so true.

[Anonymous]

Very inappropriate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very inappropriate

How dare they???!!! Sarcasm.

[Anonymous]

Why would it be inappropriate? OP, do you know what the book is about?

[Anonymous]

Troll score: 6/10. Plausible, but not enough.

[Anonymous]

Having read it, I'd describe it as a book that's making an argument about the ways in which power has been racially distributed -- and which also advocates for certain ways to deal with the distribution that it's claiming.

If the book is required reading in preparation for a free and open discussion that can include dissent, that's fine. If the idea behind requiring you to read the book is that it presents "the truth," then, yes, that's concerning.

Cue folks jumping on me and calling me uneducated. To them, I say: DiAngelo's work is not broadly respected among serious academics, including many (POC, if it matters) colleagues whose work focuses on the intersection of race and power in the United States.

[Anonymous]

Edit to 02:22

* to deal with the distribution that it's claiming *exists.*

(Sorry, omitted a word there.)

NB: I don't disagree entirely with her analysis of that distribution of power in the United States. But she explicitly argues that 1) the supreme power of whiteness and 2) "white privilege" as the ultimate force structuring social capital and self-understandings extend even to non-western nations -- including nations that were never colonized, and in fact engaged in colonial projects of their own.

In doing so, ironically, Diangelo shows herself to be deeply shaped by orientalist traditions of thought which locate agency and power primarily or only in whiteness and "the west."

[Anonymous]

What school district? I have a guess, just want to see if I'm right. I don't work there anymore but I'm basing my guess on what the superintendent had the staff reading previous years.

[Anonymous]

Obviously the author means White Christian people because Jewish people, even white ones, have absolutely no problem discussing racism. We experience it regularly -- some of us daily. We are acutely aware of racism against us based on nothing but our DNA for many of us who do not consider ourselves religiously Jewish, but just had one grandparent who was Jewish and so our family was sent off to death camps. And because of our own experience with racism, we are able to talk about it when we see it happening to other peoples, too. I do understand how White Christian people may have this problem, but White Jewish, White Muslim, White ____[Add minority status here] does not have this problem. We experience it firsthand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You, honey, are the definition of white fragility.

Took the words out of my mouth.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone actually read "required reading" for the workplace?

[Anonymous]

Just pretend to read it and nod along to any discussion group. Even if you do read it, there's no point in saying anything because it can be used against you, anyway.