I understand the purpose this book serves and the goal the author had in mind, but personally I came out of this with not much new information. I also just felt kind of off about a white person writing this kind of book, I guess, which may be something I need to investigate? I just didn't like the tone at all, and I felt I got much more useful information from reading Black authors such as Ibram X. Kendi, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Ijeoma Oluo, etc. I'm barely starting to scratch the surface of literature and analyses written by and spoken about by Black activists, scholars, and professionals, and I still felt like this book was too introductory even for me.

I also have learned pretty much all of this information from watching content creators like Portia Burch (@portia.noir) and The White Woman Whisperer. I tend to agree with Portia's view of white fragility in that it centers whiteness and shifts the power of the dynamic away from Black people, indigenous people, and people of color who are harmed by racism. White fragility is racism, period, and it should be called out for the harm it does as racism, not infantilized or renamed to be disguised as something different.

Even putting aside that I disagree with the usage of the term "white fragility", I get that the target audience is white progressives that tend to believe they are not racist (while holding conscious or subconscious racist beliefs). I get that this book is meant to open a conversation about how we as white people respond to situations where our prejudices are challenged. But I don't think this book particularly excels at discussing the topic or giving a useful framework to approach these issues moving forward. There were some good tidbits, especially about doing the inner work to investigate the impact you have daily despite the fact that you may have good intentions, but overall I don't feel like I gained anything significant from this.