80 pages • 2 hours read
Robin DiAngeloA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Author’s Note-Chapter 1
Reading Check
1. Identity politics and the complexity of racial identities (Author’s Note)
2. The author (Introduction)
3. To identify themselves as white (Chapter 1)
Short-Answer
1. White fragility refers to the difficulty white people have when handling racial stress. It arises when a white person’s comfort is challenged by even “the mere suggestion that being white has meaning” (2) (Introduction)
2. That they should challenge themselves to have an internal dialogue about that discomfort because the only way to work against white fragility is to build “capacity to sustain the discomfort of not knowing” (14) (Chapter 1)
3. DiAngelo addresses white people in the text, which is important since she is actively choosing to disrupt the racial comfort that most white people experience living in a white supremacist society like that of the United States. Disrupting this comfort, she potentially hopes to undo and challenge (Chapter 1)
Chapters 2-4
Reading Check