Structure

The author begins by addressing the impossibility of remaining free of racism in a society that is permeated by race, racism, and privilege based on race. She then posits that the reader is part of the larger society and therefore is racist by definition. Her narrative moves on to different forms that white privilege and white fragility acquire, including the beliefs in individualism and objectivism that enable whites to claim, falsely in her view, that they are color blind and without racism. She looks at the different forms that racism have acquired in the post-Civil Rights era and studies the ways in which white fragility is triggered. She also looks at the way white fragility serves to uphold white privilege and the way in which white women's tears, or guilt, takes attention away from grappling with racial issues. She ends with new ways in which whites can...