SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Now you can take a class that focuses on white fragility in Seattle

Aug 10, 2016, 3:59 PM

The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture will be offering classes that focus on white fragility. (AP)...

The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture will be offering classes that focus on white fragility. (AP)

(AP)

Your tax dollars at work in Seattle — soon, you’ll be paying for classes that focus on white fragility. From the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, white fragility is defined as “the inability of white people to tolerate racial stress. And it is going to offer the perspectives and skills needed for white people to have more constructive cross-racial interactions.”

Is there some scientific study that shows that you can have positive interracial interactions if only one side is considered to be the side with the problem? Can someone point me in the direction of the study that says that white people’s brains are unable to handle racial stress?

Related: The Black Lives Matter movement is now aligning with Palestine

The inventor of the idea of white fragility came from a woman named Robin DiAngelo. She was teaching a training class in Washington state. DiAngelo said the people in the training were mostly white, working in offices that were 98 percent white, living lives that never dealt with people of color. And they were incredibly hostile and mean when talking about ideas on race.

But what were the discussion points? Was DiAngelo pointing out implicit bias that only white people have?

By the way, DiAngelo is white. But she doesn’t have any bias or fragility. And we’re going to pay her a bunch of money to teach a class on white fragility!

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Now you can take a class that focuses on white fragility in Seattle