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white fragility

Can you read this whole article without feeling a little defensive? I think you can.

This satirical video from AJ+ called "How to Protect White People's Feelings in the Workplace" is hilarious — but, if you're white, it might make you feel uncomfortable.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm white. What about you? Do you find it hilarious? Let's talk after you watch it.

Did watching this video make you feel defensive? If so, there's a reason for that.

Don't panic. I want to explain something to you, white person to white person.

That little grumble in your gut that makes you feel uncomfortable when I bring up racism? There's a term for that. The term for that feeling might also make you feel uncomfortable or defensive. But it's just a term. It's called "white fragility."It's what happens when a white person prioritizes how it feels to be called racist over how a person of color might feel experiencing racism.

To be clear, it doesn't mean you're fragile, but if hearing that term makes you feel like closing this browser window or rolling your eyes, you might be experiencing it. The good news is, there's a pretty simple solution to feeling this way.

When you feel yourself getting defensive, tell that feeling to take a seat and try just listening to what's being said.

Unlike people of color, who are often confronted with conversations about race and have their interactions in the world affected by their skin color, white people aren't ever really forced to talk about race and racism unless they have to — usually after they've said something insensitive or, dare I say, racist,even if we didn't mean to come across that way.

Don't feel the need to rebut their argument; just think on it.

So if you do feel yourself getting defensive, try to imagine how the other person is feeling.

Think about all the hoops people who aren't white have to jump through in their head before they try to talk to a white person about things like race. If a coworker who is a person of color isn't reassuring enough when telling their white coworker to stop touching their hair, their white coworker might feel bad and think they're being called racist. Which many white people feel is the worst thing they can be called. But, it's not the same as experiencing racism, and, frankly, people of color shouldn't have be afraid to keep it real with us.

We as white people shouldn't take it personally when someone explains things to us. You're smarter than that. I believe in you! Grown-up conversations and challenging ideas are super fun!

When you feel yourself getting defensive, you could try researching the issue before responding.

If you watched the video above and felt the urge to be defensive, maybe it's time to take a step back. Don't be the white people in this COMPLETELY SATIRICAL video. Learn. Adapt. If you do, those conversations might improve in the future, which is the whole point of talking about them anyway. We can't fix it if we don't talk about it.

The next time you say to yourself, "This person of color friend speaking to me is making me confront uncomfortable ideas," I highly recommend you do three things.

Stop talking like a after-school special robot in your head. No one talks like that. You'll thank me later.
Resist the urge to get defensive and rebut what said person is saying. Just take it in, process it, go google about it and learn.
If you think they are being divisive because they ask you to consider their perspective about racism, then you need to ask yourself, "When my mechanic says my car is broken, is he making it worse by telling me about it?" Answer that rhetorical question and repeat step 2.

Now could you maybe also share or tweet this with people and urge them not to be defensive? Because it's hilarious. And horrible. Please?

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The odd and alarming connection between racial biases and the perception of time.

You're walking in front of a lot of people. You tell yourself, "Don't trip. Don't trip." But what happens?

GIF from "The 85th Academy Awards."

That anxiety is real. You're so worried about embarrassing yourself or doing something wrong that you get distracted and make careless mistakes.

It happens to the best of us.

But instead of anxiety about embarrassing yourself in public, think about the anxiety some white people may have about appearing racist.

Their intentions are good. (But you know what they say about good intentions.) They don't want to mispronounce a name, say something even remotely offensive, or appear the least bit uninformed. They have black friends — honest-to-goodness black friends!

GIF from "Happy Endings."

But when some white people interact with people of color, they're so nervous about appearing racist, their anxiety can shoot through the roof.

Their heart may race, muscles may tense up, and according to a study released last fall, it can also screw with their perceptions of time.

Social psychologists at Lehigh University explored the idea of race-related anxiety and perceptions of time, and the results are fascinating.

First, they asked a group of volunteers (24 women and 16 men) to complete a questionnaire measuring whether or not they were motivated to control their racial biases. Then, they put the volunteers in front of a computer and displayed geometric images followed by black faces and white faces with neutral expressions. The shapes appeared for exactly 600 milliseconds. The faces appeared for 300 to 1200 milliseconds. It was up to the volunteers to determine whether they thought each face was given more or less time than the shapes.

It probably looked a little something like this. Photo by Connor Einarsen/Flickr (cropped).

The result? Volunteers mistook short amounts of time for longer ones when viewing the black faces. Their heightened arousal caused them to perceive time slowing down. The findings were confirmed with a second set of volunteers, this time 36 white men.

Why did this happen? Lead researcher Dr. Gordon Moskowitz believes it's likely due to race-related anxiety (or what some refer to as "white fragility"). People are so worried about making a mistake and appearing racist, they get nervous and can trip themselves up and do just what they were trying to avoid.

GIF from "Parks & Recreation."

“Ironically, people trying to suppress the appearance of bias are most likely to display this form of implicit bias because their motivation to control prejudice induces race-related arousal,” Moskowitz wrote in the study results.

OK, but who cares if race-related anxiety can make time seem to speed up? Why does that matter? Ask a black kid with his hands in the air.

There are many situations where this time perception can be troubling. Consider the white employer who guesses she met with a black job applicant for 30 minutes, when it was really closer to 10.

Or the doctor who was supposed to spend five minutes assessing his black patient, but really spent just a minute or two.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Or the police officer who might give a black teen three seconds to drop the object in his hands, but shoots after one.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

The consequences of this misperception can range from a perceived slight or minor inconvenience to death.

It may sound like a big jump, but consider this:

Bryant Heyward, a black homeowner in South Carolina, called 911 to report a home invasion. When police arrived on the scene, Deputy Keith Tyner took less than two seconds to fire his weapon to "suppress the threat." The threat in this case was Heyward who stepped outside to greet the officers while holding his brother's gun. Though the gun wasn't pointed at the officers, Deputy Keith Tyner shot twice because Heyward didn't drop his weapon quickly enough.

Mind you, according to the dash cam, the entire incident took two seconds.

Though Heyward survived, he is paralyzed and may not walk again.

— (@)

Systemic racism, white fragility, and implicit biases affect us in ways we're only beginning to discover.

When you realize some of these biases might be embedded at a borderline chemical level, they can seem impossible to overcome. But none of these findings excuse poor behavior, inattention, abuses of power, or murder. Race-related anxiety is just one more thing to work through on the road to equality. We can and will get there.

Tackling white fragility is the best place to start. Frank and open discussions about whiteness, privilege, and microaggressions can loosen the stranglehold these implicit biases have on our society and culture. It's easier said than done but programs, like Portland Community College's Whiteness History Month, are creating safe spaces to do just that.

Instead of worrying about making mistakes, we need to do right by our friends and neighbors, put our hang-ups aside, and start looking out for one another.

A Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle, Washington. Photo by Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images.