White Fragility Symposium

Work, Not Woke—Why on Race, U.S. Higher Education Should Copy the U.S. Army

Editor’s Note: This article is the last in a symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the prior essays in this series, click here. On Race, the Best of Times and the Worst of Times For inter-ethnic relations in America, it is the best and worst of times. It is […]

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Inclusive Majorities in an Inclusive Nation: Managing Ethnic Diversity

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In this piece, I argue for a new way of conceiving national identity and ethnic relations. This entails a porous ‘melting-pot’ ethnic majority, which is informal and […]

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History, Heritage, and the Many Troubles with 1619

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. The great enemy to the American vision is essentialism, which says that your ethnicity or your race is who you are in your unchangeable essence … The […]

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The Cost of False Facts: A Critical Review of Incorrect Boogey-Men from Glassner’s 1990s to Today

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Barry Glassner’s classic The Culture of Fear just turned 20. In the text, Glassner became perhaps the first serious social scientist to point out to an intelligent […]

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Prejudice Under the Microscope: The Implicit Association Test (Part III)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In Part II of this series, evidence for the race Implicit Association Test (IAT) was evaluated as to (1) the plausibility of the underlying construct that it […]

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Prejudice Under the Microscope: The Implicit Association Test (Part II)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In Part I of this series, the introduction in 1998 of the race Implicit Association Test (IAT) — developed originally by Professor Anthony G. Greenwald and his […]

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Prejudice Under the Microscope: The Implicit Association Test (Part I)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. A collective groan could be heard around the world as Stars Wars fans finished viewing the eagerly anticipated Episode I: The Phantom Menace (TPM) — released approximately […]

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Why Scholar-Activists Made Everything About Identity and Why This Goes So Badly Wrong

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Liberalism vs “Social Justice” Social justice is a good thing. It is almost unheard of for anyone to say they would not want a just society. Humans […]

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Diversity Training and Moral Education

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. “Who says diversity says conflict,” writes Donald Black in Moral Time. Black is a sociologist who has spent decades studying morality, and his recent work identifies the […]

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The Inadequacy of White Fragility

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. It is a misrepresentation to argue that White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo represents all of the antiracism movement. However, it is a book that has topped the New […]

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Diversity is Important. Diversity-Related Training is Terrible.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, many colleges and universities have been rolling out new training requirements – often oriented towards reducing […]

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Don’t Go for Woke: Microaggressions are unscientific

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like…what insults them, what is demeaning to them. […]

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How Political Correctness on Race Fuels Polarization

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Craig Frisby usefully points us to the way moral innovators and “virtue-signaling” corporate imitators have stretched the meaning of racism beyond where objective social science and common […]

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Racism: What It Is and What It Is Not (Part III)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Part II of this series illustrated how the concept of “racism” has come to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean—which, over time, has diminished in its […]

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Racism: What It Is and What It Is Not (Part II)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In Part I of this series, an attempt was made to break down the meaning of the word “racism” using basic rules of word morphology. Unfortunately, commentaries […]

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Racism: What It Is and What It Is Not (Part I)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. A writer for a popular online entertainment publication once remarked that a James Bond movie is often only as good as its villain. This applies to the “Black […]

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The Intellectual Fragility of White Fragility

Editor’s Note: This article the first in an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Five years ago, no one had heard of the term “white fragility.” But today, fueled by social media, elite corporations, and educational institutions, white fragility (and Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling book of that […]

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