White Fragility cover art

White Fragility

Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

White Fragility

By: Robin DiAngelo
Narrated by: Amy Landon
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

Anger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. After, all, a racist is the worst thing a person can be, right? But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction.

Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy. Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility. It is not enough to simply hold abstract progressive views and condemn the obvious racists on social media - change starts with us all at a practical, granular level, and it is time for all white people to take responsibility for relinquishing their own racial supremacy.

'With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to "bad people." In doing so, she moves our national discussions forward. This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change' Claudia Rankine

'By turns mordant and then inspirational, an argument that powerful forces and tragic histories stack the deck fully against racial justice alongside one that we need only to be clearer, try harder, and do better' David Roediger, Los Angeles Review of Books

'The value in White Fragility lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance' Katy Waldman, New Yorker

'A vital, necessary, and beautiful book' Michael Eric Dyson

©2019 Robin DiAngelo (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Discrimination Social justice Thought-Provoking

Listeners also enjoyed...

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race cover art
Is Everyone Really Equal? cover art
Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart cover art
The Good Ally cover art
Brit(ish) cover art
Black and British cover art
Black Fatigue cover art
The Madness of Crowds cover art
Dear White America cover art
Reading, Writing, and Racism cover art
Woke Racism cover art
Between the World and Me cover art
Say the Right Thing cover art
The Wake Up cover art
The Parasitic Mind cover art
Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race cover art

Critic reviews

Brings language to the emotional structures that make true discussions about racial attitudes difficult. With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people.' This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change through productive social and intimate relationships (Claudia Rankine)
All stars
Most relevant
I'm going to start with the good here - I found this book insightful, and I'm glad it was recommended to me. It offers a method of stepping outside your own head and analysing how you approach issues of race without judgement, with a strong focus on how to do better and why our actions often have more impact than we expect. This book made me want to reflect on my own actions and thoughts, and how they affect those around me.

But, the narration. "Monotonous" is a description that gets thrown around too often with audiobooks, often unfairly, but at first I genuinely believed that the narration was done with text-to-speech. In the interest of fairness I should probably say that the narrator definitely warms up and becomes less robotic as things go on, but it always feels extremely clinical.

This isn't helped by the fact that a good portion of the book is lists of phrases and thoughts - while they're meant to illustrate common thought processes, or examples of racism, they're delivered so flatly that they blur together become hard to follow. I've honestly never had such an issue keeping focused on an audiobook before, especially one that genuinely interested me.

The narration is at least clear, and I can imagine there's an argument in favour of having a narrator that's able to keep an educational tone while discussing difficult issues. But I just found myself wishing for some more passion or emphasis in the delivery.

Finally, a more personal downside for me is that the book is heavily focused on America. This obviously doesn't invalidate its message, and 95% of it is universal, but every once in a while it would lean heavily on an example of distinctly American culture and I'd find it very hard to relate to. This isn't really a criticism - if the book would probably be a thousand hours long if it tried to explain how racism infiltrates and affects every culture differently. However, this did mean that I got slightly less out of this book than "Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race", a book that ensures it covers the aspects of racism present in British culture specifically.

It's very easy to focus on the negatives of the audiobook, but I genuinely found it enlightening and I'd recommend it to others. Just be prepared to deal with the narration!

Good, in spite of the narration.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The narration was so bad I returned the audio book and bought a hard copy.

Good content. Terrible narration.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

exceptional breakdown of racism and how every white person is complicit in it. must read!

must read for every white person

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

this is a vital book for western cultures as we are coming in to the new decade. its important to note these properties that whote people have that prevent change and protect them from discomfort, that we all thought were ok. quite dry, i suppose it's an academic read, so i understand why the performance was quite robotic so to get through the subject matter, which isnt to my taste, but that's not a reason to snub this book.

enlightening

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The overall premise is challenging and thought provoking, especially when the principal target of the book, are readers like me! This book certainly gave me a number of points to consider about myself. I will endeavour to read further on the topic. At times I found the content somewhat verbose, detracting from the overall message. Is this due to the subject matter or the style of the author? That said, overall this is a read/listen that is worth your time and attention.

A thought provoking book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews