Beyond ‘White Fragility’

If you want to let freedom ring, hammer on economic injustice.

As soon as the Civil War came to a close, it was clear there could be no actual freedom for the formerly enslaved without a fundamental transformation of economic relations.

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and in-sulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protec-tion builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be-comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.

More From The New York Times (subscription required):