White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Multiple Choice

1. B. How different identities are more important or visible in different contexts (Author’s Note)

2. C. Social; meaning to perpetuate white supremacy (Chapter 2)

3. D. None of the above. In the author’s analysis, the concept of race and racism did not exist before European colonization (Chapter 2)

4. A. It is a racial category devoid of any real genetic or biological markers (Chapter 2)

5. A. It emphasizes the myriad of ways that white privilege functions in individual lives (Chapter 4)

6. A. Because it allows white people avoid confronting racism (Chapter 4)

7. C. Murder (Chapter 5)

8. D. The Blind Side (Chapter 6)

9. D. That white people are good people, free of racism (Chapter 7)

10. A. It silences otherwise productive discussions about racism, denies racism as a problem, and maintains white solidarity (Chapter 9)

11. C. A state of racial comfort rooted in the identity of being good people free of racism (Chapter 7)

12. A. Racist (Chapter 12)

13. B. Other white people (Chapter 12)

Long-Answer Response

1. White fragility exists because white people in the United States feel racially comfortable in all settings and expect this comfort to continue—an assumption that comes directly from a white supremacist system. When white people are forced to confront the topic of racism, it provokes feelings of discomfort thereby causing white fragility to occur (Chapter 4)

2. She is referring to white supremacy. She argues that it is absurd for white people to be so ignorant about the systems and consequences of racism in the United States when the evidence of white supremacy is all around us (Chapter 12)