Dear White People: Please Do Not Read Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”

A destructive book full of bad reasoning and bad advice is topping the bestseller charts

On June 5th, Jonathan Capehart wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled, “Dear White People, Please Read ‘White Fragility’.” In it, he writes that Robin DiAngelo, the book’s author, “forces white people to see and understand how white supremacy permeates their lives and to recognize how they perpetuate it. More importantly, she shows them what they can do to change themselves and dismantle this pernicious system.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death, race in America has shot to the top of the headlines. It comes as no surprise, then, that books like White Fragility and How to Be an Anti-Racist, as Jeffrey Trachtenberg noted this week in the Wall Street Journal, “are among many titles related to racial issues leading Amazon’s bestseller list.”

Will these books help?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

In fact, they will make things worse. Let’s focus on Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Over the last two years, I have written about the many flaws in the theory of white fragility. In February of this year, I signed a contract with Rowman & Littlefield to write a book…