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Nice Racism

How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

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Nice Racism

Written by: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Narrated by: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
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About this listen

New York Times Best Seller

Building on the groundwork laid in the New York Times best seller White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explores how a culture of niceness inadvertently promotes racism.

In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explained how racism is a system into which all White people are socialized and challenged the belief that racism is a simple matter of good people versus bad. DiAngelo also made a provocative claim: White progressives cause the most daily harm to people of color. In Nice Racism, her follow-up work, she explains how they do so. Drawing on her background as a sociologist and over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, she picks up where White Fragility left off and moves the conversation forward.

Writing directly to White people as a White person, DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and breaks down how well-intentioned White people unknowingly perpetuate racial harm. These patterns include:

  • rushing to prove that we are “not racist”,
  • downplaying white advantage,
  • romanticizing Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color (BIPOC),
  • pretending white segregation “just happens”,
  • expecting BIPOC people to teach us about racism,
  • carefulness,
  • and feeling immobilized by shame.

DiAngelo explains how spiritual White progressives seeking community by coopting Indigenous and other groups’ rituals create separation, not connection. She challenges the ideology of individualism and explains why it is okay to generalize about White people, and she demonstrates how White people who experience other oppressions still benefit from systemic racism. Writing candidly about her own missteps and struggles, she models a path forward, encouraging white readers to continually face their complicity and embrace courage, lifelong commitment, and accountability.

Nice Racism is an essential work for any white person who recognizes the existence of systemic racism and white supremacy and wants to take steps to align their values with their actual practice. BIPOC listeners may also find the “insiders” perspective useful for navigating whiteness.

Includes a study guide.

©2021 Robin DiAngelo (P)2021 Beacon Press
Freedom & Security Racism & Discrimination Relationships Equality Critical Race Theory
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What the critics say

"A powerful new book from the author of White Fragility reveals why profound racism is often found in supposedly liberal spaces." (The Guardian)

“A pointed reminder that good intentions aren’t enough to break the cycle of racism.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“A fierce critique of the ‘culture of niceness’ that prevents the hard work of dismantling racism.... [DiAngelo] dismantles unconscious biases with precision. Readers will feel compelled to hold themselves more accountable.” (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Nice Racism

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Highly Recommend!

I listened to White Fragility last year and this book is a great follow-up. It digs deeper and I found myself taking lots of notes and making several bookmarks in each chapter. It's the kind of book you want to pay attention to when you have no/few distractions so you can really absorb the content. Highly recommend!

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A must read for everyone

I could not recommend this book more as a person of colour. It felt like the author hit a lot of topics I sometimes struggle to put into words when talking to non POC and it also taught me a few things. Thank you to the author for this.

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Insightful, heart wrenching and a call to personal action

Time to co to je down the self-education and action path. Thank you to the author and all those who have helped her learn. Thank you to my friends and colleagues that have and are helping me see and act differently.

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Essential and great sequel to White Fragility

As Dr Robin DiAngelo says in the beginning, this is a sequel to White Fragility and they take it as if you have read it. They do it so they can avoid repetition and dive deeper into the topic.

Thanks to this book I was able to realize several mistakes that I, a white latinx male progressive, was making, and I hope to improve. There were many blindspots that were not clear for me before, and now are. As the first book does, it gives names to our wrong actions and help us identify them.

As a great finishing touch, it also gives a great list of actions at the end to help us be more accountable and anti-racist.

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Again another amazing book

I love Dr.Robin thank you for all your work!!! A MUST read for everyone. Thank you for your work

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Essential reading

Paired with D’Angelos book White Fragility there is simple no good reason not to understand the systemic issues of racism from a white perspective. Along with the 1000s of BIPOC authors to further enhance the learning, this was a fantastic read and reflected my views as a person of color.

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An amazing resource for bipoc

I really enjoyed this followup to White Fragility. It delved deeper into the struggles of carving out space as a bipoc person and how destructive "nice progressive" white people can be while also providing tools and insight on how to navigate these experiences.

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Waste of time and energy

I purchased this book hoping to explore this topic and learn facts and hear discourse on what the issues were and what could be done to help. Instead, this book offers opinions without facts, blame without explanation, and puts all people (white or BIPOC) into a corner where we cannot live our lives without first looking through the distorted lense that Diangelo paints in this "book". This is nothing more than a long drawn out opinion piece, and the terms coined by this person should be removed from the lexicon until they can be addressed and supported by facts, rather than a personal opinion that does not represent any persons view except her own.
This dribble is not worth your time, and it is definitely not worth your money.

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