Olivia: Alright Jackson, on a scale of one to ten, how "nice" do you think you are? Jackson: I mean, I hold doors open, I say please and thank you... I'm a solid nine. A Canadian-level nine. Why, am I about to find out that that makes me a terrible person? Olivia: You just might. That's the central, incredibly uncomfortable question at the heart of Robin DiAngelo's book, Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. Jackson: Oh, boy. I feel like I need to apologize in advance for whatever I'm about to say in this episode. Olivia: (Laughs) Exactly. And this is coming from DiAngelo, the same academic who coined the term "white fragility," so she has a long history of poking at these exact sore spots in progressive culture. Her work is famously polarizing; readers either find it profoundly eye-opening or deeply frustrating. There's very little middle ground. Jackson: Okay, so she's basically an expert in making people squirm. I can see why the reception is so mixed. Let's get into it. What exactly is this concept of 'nice racism'? It sounds like a complete contradiction.

Olivia: It does, and that's the point. DiAngelo argues that for people of color, the most frequent and draining racial harm they experience daily doesn't come from overt, snarling bigots. It comes from well-meaning, progressive white people who see themselves as allies. Jackson: Hold on, that's a huge claim. How can someone with good intentions be more harmful than someone with malicious intent? That feels like a stretch. Olivia: The key is understanding that racism is a system, not just a personal feeling of meanness. The system is designed to be comfortable for white people and uncomfortable for people of color. "Nice racism" is the set of polite, friendly behaviors that keeps that system humming along smoothly, without any messy conflict. Jackson: So the niceness is a kind of social lubricant for the machinery of racism? Olivia: Precisely. DiAngelo starts the book with a powerful story about her friend, Carolyn, a Black woman. In the early 2000s, Carolyn was part of a predominantly white social justice group. For weeks, she was the only person of color in a subgroup dedicated to learning about oppression. Jackson: I have a bad feeling about where this is going. Olivia: You should. After six weeks of this, the white male facilitator turns to her and, in front of everyone, asks if she would teach the next session on racism. Jackson: Oh, no. So, 'Hey, you're Black, please perform your experience for our educational benefit.' Olivia: Exactly. And Carolyn is trapped. If she says no, she risks being seen as uncooperative or not a team player. If she says yes, she has to take on this immense emotional labor of teaching a group of white people about their own blind spots, knowing she'll likely face defensiveness and fragility. She was so anxious about it, she asked DiAngelo, a white colleague, to co-present with her, hoping another white face would make the message more palatable. Jackson: The fact that she even had to make that calculation is exhausting to just hear about. Olivia: It gets worse. They spend hours preparing this airtight presentation. They deliver it. And at the end, a white woman in the group raises her hand and says, with sincere gratitude, "I just want to thank the organization for finally teaching us about racism." Jackson: Wow. Not "thank you, Carolyn, for your incredible labor and vulnerability." But "thank you, abstract institution, for passively providing this content to me." She made Carolyn completely invisible. Olivia: That's the core of nice racism. It was a polite, well-intentioned comment that completely erased the Black woman who had just poured her heart and expertise out for them. It revealed what DiAngelo calls a "colonialist dynamic"—the white group was passively receiving knowledge, and Carolyn's effort was just a resource to be consumed. No one was mean. Everyone was "nice." And yet, immense harm was done. Jackson: That story is infuriating. It perfectly captures that quote from Martin Luther King Jr., doesn't it? About the "white moderate" being the great stumbling block. He said that "shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." Olivia: That's the exact quote DiAngelo uses. Because that shallow understanding, that "niceness," allows white people to feel good about themselves while changing nothing. It prioritizes white comfort over actual justice. The goal becomes avoiding tension, not creating change. Jackson: And it puts the burden entirely on people of color to be patient, to be the teachers, to manage white people's feelings, all while navigating a system that's already stacked against them. Olivia: And if they're not "nice" about it? If they show their frustration or anger? Then they're the problem. They're the ones creating tension. The niceness is a cage.

Jackson: Okay, so that's the big picture. But DiAngelo gets super specific about the behaviors, right? She calls them 'moves.' This is the part that feels like it's going to be a personal attack. I'm ready to cringe. Olivia: (Laughs) It feels personal because it is. These are the unconscious scripts we run to protect our sense of being a "good white person." Let's talk about a couple of the big ones. The first is Credentialing. Jackson: Credentialing. What does that mean? Like showing your 'I'm not a racist' ID card? Olivia: That's a perfect way to put it. It's the immediate rush to prove your bona fides the second race comes up. It's saying things like, "Oh, I grew up in a diverse neighborhood," or "My best friend in third grade was Black," or "I went to Brazil once, I love different cultures." It's a move to exempt yourself from the conversation. Jackson: Right, it's a way of saying, "This conversation isn't about me, I've already passed the test." Olivia: And DiAngelo shares this absolutely mortifying story about herself to illustrate the most toxic form of credentialing. Years ago, before she was an expert in this field, she and her partner went to dinner with a Black couple for the first time. Jackson: Oh, I am bracing for impact. Olivia: She was so anxious to prove she wasn't racist that she spent the entire evening regaling them with racist jokes and stories her family told. Her logic was, "If I show you how much I disapprove of their racism, you'll see that I'm one of the good ones." Jackson: That is a five-alarm fire of a social interaction. She was literally subjecting them to a barrage of racism to prove she was against racism. It's like setting a house on fire to show how good you are at fire safety. Olivia: It's the ultimate act of centering yourself. Her anxiety, her need for validation, became the entire point of the evening. She wasn't connecting with them as people; she was using them as a mirror to reflect her own goodness back at herself. That is a classic, if extreme, example of a credentialing move gone horribly wrong. Jackson: Wow. Okay, that's a powerful example. What's another one? Give me another 'move'. Olivia: A very common one in progressive circles is what she calls Out-Woking. This is the move where you perform your superior racial enlightenment by publicly calling out and shaming another white person for a mistake. Jackson: Wait a minute, isn't that just holding people accountable? I thought that's what we were supposed to do. Olivia: Here's the crucial difference DiAngelo points out. Accountability is about repair. It's often done privately, with the goal of helping someone learn and grow, and repairing the harm done. Out-woking is about public performance. It's about positioning yourself as the smartest, most-evolved person in the room. Jackson: So it's less about helping the person who messed up and more about boosting your own status in the group. Olivia: Exactly. She tells a story about a white activist named Rose who was publicly shamed in a group email by another white activist. Instead of talking to her, this person performed the takedown for an audience. The goal wasn't to help Rose learn; it was to declare, "I am more woke than her." It creates a culture of fear and perfectionism, not growth. It turns anti-racism into a competition that white people win, which is, you know, the opposite of the point. Jackson: That makes so much sense. It's the difference between being a coach and being a heckler. The coach wants you to get better; the heckler just wants everyone to see them being clever at your expense. Olivia: That's a great analogy. And it highlights how these moves, from credentialing to out-woking, are all about protecting the self-image of the white progressive, rather than doing the actual, messy work of dismantling racism.

Jackson: This all sounds like a minefield. If being nice is a trap and calling people out can be a performative 'move,' what are you supposed to do? Just stay silent and hope you don't mess up? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question, and DiAngelo's answer is that you have to fundamentally shift your goal. The goal is not to be non-racist, which is an impossible, static state. The goal is to practice anti-racism. You have to move from a state of niceness to a state of courage. Jackson: Courage sounds a lot harder than niceness. Niceness is easy. Olivia: Courage is a practice. And she lays out what that practice involves. First, it requires a commitment to lifelong education. You have to accept that you'll never be "done" learning. Society is constantly reinforcing racist ideas, so you have to be constantly, actively unlearning them. Jackson: So, you can't just read one book and get your anti-racist certificate. Olivia: Not at all. The second, and maybe most important practice, is building authentic, cross-racial relationships. She cites this staggering statistic that something like 75 percent of white people in the U.S. have no Black friends. Our lives are profoundly segregated. Jackson: And if you don't have real relationships, then all your ideas about other groups are just based on media, stereotypes, and abstractions. Olivia: Exactly. You have no real-world feedback loop. You have no one to be accountable to. And that leads to the third practice: accountability. DiAngelo insists that allyship is a verb, not a noun you can claim for yourself. It's something you do, and it's only meaningful if you are answerable to the people you claim to be allying with. Jackson: So how does that work in practice? 'Being accountable' sounds a bit corporate and vague. Olivia: She gives a really moving example. She tells a story about a time she messed up and disrespected a Black colleague. She was distraught, filled with shame and defensiveness. Instead of spiraling, she called a white friend and colleague, Christine Saxman, who she knew had a deep commitment to this work. Jackson: And what did Christine do? Olivia: She held her in what she calls "loving accountability." She didn't say, "Oh, you're a good person, you didn't mean it." That would be niceness. And she didn't shame her. That would be out-woking. Instead, she gave her space to feel her feelings, and then gently but firmly helped her analyze how her own whiteness and unexamined biases led to the mistake. She supported her, but also held her to the standard of her own values, and helped her figure out how to make a genuine repair with the colleague she harmed. Jackson: Wow. That's... that's real friendship. It's support that doesn't let you off the hook. It's support that helps you be better. Olivia: That's the model. It's not about individual perfection. It's about being in a community, in relationships, where you can be imperfect, own your mistakes, and commit to repairing the harm. It's a continuous process.

Jackson: So really, the whole book is a challenge to the idea of individualism. It's saying that you can't solve a collective problem with individual 'goodness.' Olivia: Exactly. The book is so polarizing because it refuses to give an easy answer or a checklist for being a 'good person.' It argues that for white progressives, the real work isn't 'out there' fixing other, more obviously racist people. The work is 'in here,' examining our own deeply ingrained patterns, our defensiveness, and our desperate cultural need to be seen as 'nice.' Jackson: It really leaves you with one, very sharp question: Is my desire to be comfortable and to be seen as a good, nice person more important than the actual, real-world impact I'm having on other people? Olivia: That's the question. And sitting with the discomfort of that is the beginning of the work. It's not about guilt, DiAngelo says, it's about responsibility. Jackson: It's a tough question, and one worth sitting with. I feel like I need to go back and re-evaluate my nine-out-of-ten niceness score. Olivia: (Laughs) Maybe we all do. It’s a profound challenge, and we'd love to hear what our listeners think about this one. Find us on our socials and let us know what resonated, or what pushed back. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.