Opinion

Opinion: Reparations Reveals a Sense of “White Fragility”

Published

6 years ago

July 27, 2019

Editor’s Note: Leo Bazile, a former city councilmember and scholar on reparations issues has published articles in the Post and has proposed that Oakland “remain in the vanguard of direct action and advocacy on the issue.” He says, “The leadership shown by Barbara Lee and Lynette McElhaney makes it possible for the community to participate through a commission to present our plans to congress.”

When Katrina Browne testified before the June 19 congressional hearing on the H.R.40 Reparations Legislation introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and co-sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee, she addressed the very important threshold issue of White Fragility.

Katrina Browne

She testified about her discovery that she was a descendant of one of the largest and most powerful slave trading families in the history of this country.

Browne said she, as a 27-year old Seminary student studying theology and ethics, received a family history brochure from her grandmother that pointed out that she is a descendant of the De Wolf family of Rhode Island slave traders that brought more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other U.S. family. Her calm and sincere testimony revealed their family’s relationship of wealth and political power. When she said:

“Over 12,000 men, women and children were taken across the middle passage in their ships.” The family’s leading slave trader, James De’ Wolf, was reported to have become the second richest man in the nation at the time of his death—and he served in the U.S.Senate.”

Browne’s testimony should be read by all who are concerned about the political and moral questions that the Reparations issue raises for the upcoming 2020 elections.

Since Black Democrats are being told by some leaders that raising the Reparations issue could jeopardize the election, Browne’s White Fragility issue rubs up against the political reality of when and how to address this moral imperative.

So is the moral imperative more important to African Americans than who the next president is going to be?

Browne testified:

“I want to acknowledge rightaway that the very idea of this REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY AND RACISM is to assault their sense of what this nation has been, of how we achieved our national greatness and perhaps even the role their families and communities played in this history. To weigh a national effort at acknowledgement and repair is to discount what they believed were hard sacrifices of previous generations. And to question the sources of their prosperity is to connect them to the history of slavery.”

In her New York Times bestseller on the subject of “White Fragility,” Robin Diangelo wrote about how whites enjoy benefits from this separate and unequal society “We are insulated from racial stress, at the same time we can come to feel entitled to and deeply deserving of our advantage. Given how we experience racial discrimination in a society we dominate we haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or never admit to ourselves, we become “highly fragile” in conversations about race.

We consider a challenge to our racial worldview as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. Thus we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense.

“ To connect us to the system of racism triggers a range of defensive responses such as anger, fear and guilt And behaviors such as argumentation, silence and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.

These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge. They return our racial comfort and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as “White Fragility.”

“ Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement. White fragility is not a weakness per se, in fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and protection of white advantage,” Di Angelo writes.

Leo Bazile

Posts by Leo Bazile

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 24 – 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 24 – 30, 2025

Published

1 day ago

December 25, 2025

Oakland Post

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 17 – 23, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 17 – 23, 2025

Published

6 days ago

December 20, 2025

Oakland Post

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Advice

COMMENTARY: If You Don’t Want Your ‘Black Card’ Revoked, Watch What You Bring to Holiday Dinners

From Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Day, whether it’s the dining room table or the bid whist (Spades? Uno, anyone?) table, your card may be in danger.

Published

2 weeks ago

December 14, 2025

Oakland Post

The ‘aunties’ playing cards. iStock photo by Andreswd.

By Wanda Ravernell
Post Staff

From the fourth week of November to the first week in January, if you are of African descent, but particularly African American, certain violations of cultural etiquette will get your ‘Black card’ revoked.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Day, whether it’s the dining room table or the bid whist (Spades? Uno, anyone?) table, your card may be in danger.

It could take until Super Bowl Sunday for reinstatement.

I don’t know much about the card table, but for years I was on probation by the ‘Aunties,’ the givers and takers of Black cards.

How I Got into Trouble

It was 1970-something and I was influenced by the health food movement that emerged from the hippie era. A vegetarian (which was then considered sacrilegious by most Black people I knew) prepared me a simple meal: grated cheese over steamed broccoli, lentils, and brown rice.

I introduced the broccoli dish at the Friday night supper with my aunt and grandfather. She pronounced the bright green broccoli undone, but she ate it. (I did not, of course, try brown rice on them.)

I knew that I would be allowed back in the kitchen when she attempted the dish, but the broccoli had been cooked to death. (Y’all remember when ALL vegetables, not just greens, were cooked to mush?)

My Black card, which had been revoked was then reattained because they ate what I prepared and imitated it.

Over the decades, various transgressions have become normalized. I remember when having a smoked turkey neck instead of a ham hock in collard greens was greeted with mumblings and murmurings at both the dining room and card tables. Then came vegan versions with just olive oil (What? No Crisco? No bacon, at least?) and garlic. And now my husband stir fries his collards in a wok.

But No Matter How Things Have Changed…

At holiday meals, there are assigned tasks. Uncle Jack chopped raw onions when needed. Uncle Buddy made the fruit salad for Easter. My mother brought the greens in winter, macaroni salad in summer. Aunt Deanie did the macaroni and cheese, and the great aunts, my deceased grandmother’s sisters, oversaw the preparation of the roast beef, turkey, and ham. My father, if he were present, did the carving.

These designations/assignments were binding agreements that could stand up in a court of law. Do not violate the law of assignments by bringing some other version of a tried-and-true dish, even if you call it a new ‘cheese and noodle item’ to ‘try out.’ The auntie lawgivers know what you are trying to do. It’s called a menu coup d’état, and they are not having it.

The time for experiments is in your own home: your spouse and kids are the Guinea pigs.

My mother’s variation of a classic that I detested from that Sunday to the present was adding crushed pineapple to mashed sweet potatoes. A relative stops by, tries it, and then it can be introduced as an add-on to the standard holiday menu.

My Aunt Vivian’s concoctions from Good Housekeeping or Ladies’ Home Journal magazine also made it to the Black people’s tables all over the country in the form of a green bean casserole.

What Not to Do and How Did It Cross Your Mind?

People are, of all things holy, preparing mac ‘n’ cheese with so much sugar it tastes like custard with noodles in it.

Also showing up in the wrong places: raisins. Raisins have been reported in the stuffing (makes no sense unless it’s in a ‘sweet meats’ dish), in a pan of corn bread, and – heresy in the Black kitchen – the MAC ‘n’ CHEESE.

These are not mere allegations: There is photographic evidence of these Black card violations, but I don’t want to defame witnesses who remained present at the scene of the crimes.

The cook – bless his/her heart – was probably well-meaning, if ignorant. Maybe they got the idea from a social media influencer, much like Aunt Viv got recipes from magazines.

Thankfully, a long-winded blessing of the food at the table can give the wary attendee time to locate the oddity’s place on the table and plan accordingly.

But who knows? Innovation always prevails, for, as the old folks say, ‘waste makes want.’ What if the leftovers were cut up, dipped in breadcrumbs and deep fried? The next day, that dish might make it to the TV tray by the card table.

An older cousin – on her way to being an Auntie – in her bonnet, leggings, T-shirt, and bunny slippers and too tired to object, might try it and like it….

And if she ‘rubs your head’ after eating it, the new dish might be a winner and (Whew!) everybody, thanks God, keeps their Black cards.

Until the next time.