you coined the term white fragility. And what's interesting is it has caused a lot of controversy, at least on my white, you, you friend. So I'd love for you to speak on how you came to coin that term. It's kind of classic, right? I've had people tell me the world, the term itself is offensive, which is perfect. It's classic white fragility, right? To name whiteness, right? It's really problematic for a lot of people. How I came to coin it was, I have a really rare job, right? Day in and day out, I hold sustained conversations on race and racism with primarily white audiences. The reason my audiences are primarily white is because I'm in the workplace, and most of the people in those positions are white, right? And in doing that, there were really consistent patterns of engagement. It was almost as if we'd been handed a script, right? And there were so predictable these reactions. And as I thought about them, they basically looked like fragility to me, the inability to handle any challenge to our positions or worldview, the entitlement to not have those positions named, right? The entitlement to be seen as, I would say, slash demand to be seen as an individual outside of race. And when I used the term fragility, it doesn't mean weak, right? It really, what it means is I can't handle that, and I will do whatever it takes for you to stop that. And if that means I need to come across as weak, I'll come across as weak, so I'll cry. If it means I need to kind of storm out or get angry and get my back up, I'll do that. And it's not necessarily, I'm consciously thinking, I'm going to block, but for many factors that I'm sure will emerge as we discuss this deeper, that reflex of, oh, I've got to stop that challenge because it's throwing me off of my racial equilibrium. And racial equilibrium for white folks is, again, comfort around the racial status quo, the default, and that is uncomfortable, so something must be wrong, coupled with, you know, this false idea that to be complicit with racism would make us bad people, you know, there are many threads that lead to this response. So yeah, I felt the need to just name it and identify it and make it clear. And that's one of the things that's important to me in my work, right? I am an academic and I can write in that really, really, a high level academic speak that you can barely understand. But I'm also an educator, and I like to take everyday familiar narratives and responses and then just make it clear, how is this actually functioning in terms of addressing racial inequity? I mean, can you give examples of white fragility for those who may not be clear on what we're talking about? Sure, it would be, okay, so the classic example is, if you have a dominant understanding of racism, right? The dominant framework for racism is that it's an either or proposition, right? That some people are racist and some people are not. And those that are bad people, they're immoral. That's the first thing. Second thing is that racist know their racist. They actually are openly aware to themselves that they don't like people of color. And so when you give, well, that's the dominant framework. And after racist frame is, there's no way any of us could avoid internalizing the messages of, and I'm gonna use the term, I risk right now, triggering white fragility in your audience. But white supremacy, we live in and swim in the water of white supremacy, and by that I mean white central, central as superior. And so it is inevitable that I have unaware investments and frameworks and that I'm coming from that place, right? So now you tried to give me some feedback about how I just in that moment, right, reinforce that. And I respond very poorly. So the first thing I would ask your audiences, even if they're primarily white, is have you ever noticed any defensiveness on this topic from white people, right? And even white people laugh at that. Yeah, we know we're really defensive. And I'll often ask people of color, have you ever tried to give white people feedback on or inevitable, but often unaware racism and had that go well for you? Right, they laugh, right? I look at it, look at Asia. So it's that, it's those, why are we so defensive? Why doesn't it go well? Because we hear a moral of slight, right? We sincerely believe it wouldn't be possible for us to be racist because we're good people. And so we get very upset and defensive and we cry and we get our feelings heard and we suggest that you don't know us and you're generalizing and you're just trying to make us feel, but you've heard all of this, right? I think that's what's resonated so much for people that is so familiar. I actually think progressive white folks like me are the hardest. To the degree that we think we're down, we're good to go, we've got friends of color, we're gonna put all our energy into deflecting, rather than the ongoing lifelong reflecting that this requires, right? You never finished. And it comes out in such, well, I'm causing because from my white point of view, subtle and maybe more or less subtle to people of color, but it comes out of us in really different kinds of ways, but they're very pernicious and they create a kind of toxic environment. And so that's another real challenge of this work is getting white progresses to reach for humility on this topic. I have never met a white person without an opinion on racism. Has anybody here ever met anybody? Okay. And yet, sincerely, if you haven't devoted years of sustained study and focus, yeah, you have an opinion. It's misinformed, it's superficial, it's limited. It couldn't be anything other than that because it's so complex and nuanced and nothing gives us the information we need. You can get a PhD, you can lead a university system without having any skills to engage in this arguably most complex and nuanced social dynamics since the founding of our country, right? I'm really curious, Robin. When you're doing these things and you've had the benefit of all this repetition to see the patterns, are there responses that you see when people get challenged on their white supremacy, that you know are not white fragility and how do you tell the difference? It doesn't ever happen. What does it look like? Essentially, it looks like receiving the feedback with grace, appreciating the feedback because you sincerely want to identify your patterns and investments, reflecting on the feedback and seeking to change your behavior, checking in with the folks who gave you the feedback, being accountable. It's actually fairly simple. If you have fundamentally integrated and understanding that it's not about being good or bad, right? That it is inevitable. And so you, can you imagine how this would shift if we actually wanted to see our racism so we could stop it so we could knock it off? But very few people respond in a way that would convey that they actually care to know.