Based on the work by several researchers, German Lopez proposes frank, brief conversations may help people re-examine and even reduce their biases.
Research says there are ways to reduce racial bias
by lindaoppenheim | Nov 17, 2016 | Article | 3 comments
3 Comments
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I can admit reading this article surfaces many conflicting feelings, the first indifference to the description of angry, fearful, and criminal behaviors triggered as responses to racial stress is called “White Fragility.” Fragility is defined as easily broken or damaged; very delicate; not strong in Merriam-Webster. I can recall vividly witnessing angry White people screaming hatred toward immigrant children arriving in SouthTexas (2014) and numerous accounts of angry White people screaming at nine Black children trying to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Ark in 1957. I mentioned only two events to illustrate the magnitude of some screaming White people toward innocent children. I purposefully left out the limitless examples of White people conducting themselves the same way toward Black adults. I realize the reality of living within a White supremacy structure that identified a social hierarchy with me on the very bottom, voiceless, and without full citizenship according to the history of the United States. I am full for several reasons, more torn because I believe that human beings need each other; however, I cannot ignore how language is coded differently to describe White pain as fragility and Black as violent and threatening. White Fragility vs. Angry Black Woman, Man, People. There is an automatic sense of understanding and empathy exhibited when a White person expressed public emotional discord. Whereas, Black people are denied the same emotional freedom and then characterized as animals out of control and blamed for the conditions of institutionalizalized oppression. I am bewildered and struggling to wrap my head around the double standard of social acceptance.
You make so many important points. If white people “got” that there is a double standard and are committed to addressing racism, they might be ready to do the really hard, necessary work of looking at ourselves.
Yes.