BY KAREN BOSSICK

Robin DiAngelo thought she was perfectly qualified as “a well-intended, open-minded person” to take a job as a diversity trainer for American corporations when the position opened in the early 1990s.

It turned out she was in for the most profound learning curve of her life.

“It wasn’t fun, and being a well-intended, open-minded white person in no way qualified me,” she said.

But the experience did lead DiAngelo to commit her life to helping other white people see how race shapes their lives. And it prompted her to write the book “White Fragility,” which describes the defensiveness white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged.

DiAngelo wiill make three appearances in the Wood River Valley this week on behalf of a coalition of organizations: The Hunger Coalition, The Advocates, Sun Valley Community School, The Community Library, CSI Nonprofit Education Initiative, Nosotros United and Blaine County Education Foundation.

She will talk about “Why Is It So Hard for People to Talk About Race?” at 6:30 p.m., Sept. 12, at Sun Valley Community School’s Theatre. And she’ll deliver a second talk at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13, at Hailey’s Community Campus with translation in Spanish available.

In addition, she will host a reservation-only racial justice workshop from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday, Sept. 13, at Ketchum’s Community Library. The workshop, DiAngelo said, will give attendees a way to grapple with how the things they learn apply to them as it offers ways to differentiate between prejudice, discrimination and systemic racism and explores the basic dynamics of current race relations in the United State. Pre-registration is required at www.comlib.org/events.

As a white person, DiAngelo said, she was raised to think of race as something that others had.

“But, really,” she said, “Being white shapes every aspect of my life. And not paying attention to that actually contributes to racial inequality.  Inaction really is a form of action. And it supports a society that I assume most of us would not want to support if we understood how race works.”

The inability to answer the question, “How has your race shaped your life?” is not benign because  those who can’t answer that question bring that lack of critical understanding to the table with them, DiAngelo said. And, when we’re at the table, we’re in the position to make decisions that affect the lives of people who are not the table.

“People of color know that most white people can’t answer that question. And it’s part of what they have to navigate every day. Most people of color work in overwhelmingly white environments with clueless but well-intended white people. So they have to spend a lot of time keeping us comfortable,” she added.

DiAngelo realized that in one case when she suggested to a black co-worker in Seattle that the two spend a relaxing weekend getaway at Coeur d’Alene Lake.

“I assumed that, since it felt relaxing to me, it would feel the same way to her,” she said. “But she did not see it that way. She did not want to be isolated in a small town with people who might not know any black people. And, at the time I made that suggestion, white nationalists were building a compound in the area at Hayden Lake, and she didn’t want to have to be worried about who might be connected to it.”

At one point in her life, DiAngelo said, she might have acted defensively or tried to minimize her friend’s experience.

“Now I understand that, while I’ve had only positive interactions with the police, not everyone does,” she said. “And if I cannot tell you what it means to be white, I’m not going to b able to validate or affirm what it means not to be white.”

Minimizing or invalidating others’ perspectives and experiences creates a climate that ends up being hostile to people of other races. And white people exhibit white privilege when they do such things as calling beige pantyhose flesh-colored.

The current political climate has made it more permissible to be racist, DiAngelo said.

“The current president is not subtle. He doesn’t mask his prejudice. And that has given others more permission to express their prejudices. It’s shocked those of us who are whiteout of a kind of denial we were in during the Obama administration when many well-intended white people thought we were post-racial, that racism was over because we had a black president. I don’t think anybody would argue that racism is over today.”

That has made people more receptive to DiAngelo’s work developing white racial literacy, prompting them to say: “Help us understand what is going on and the part that we might be playing in it.”

“It’s not about guilt. It’s not about shame. It’s about the willingness to reflect deeply,” she said. “The racial forces of the society we live in shape every one of us. And we need to change the question from ‘if I have been shaped by those forces’ to ‘how have I been shaped by those forces?’ ”

QUESTIONS?

Call The Hunger Coalition at 208-788-0121 or The Advocates at 208-788-4191.