“One of the most consistent complaints I have received upon the publication of White Fragility is that I am generalizing about white people. While the email quoted above is obviously a cruder version of this complaint (and I assume not written by a progressive), it is merely a variation on a common theme: ‘How can you claim to know anything about me just because I am white?’ This is the ideology of individualism, which can be conceptualized as a set of ideas, words, symbols, and metaphors — a narrative — that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that we are all unique and that our group memberships (such as our race, class, or gender) are not important or relevant to our opportunities. Psychologist Wendy Hollway describes narratives as an interrelated ‘system of statements which cohere around common meanings and values… [that] are a product of social factors, of powers and practices, rather than an individual’s set of ideas.’ These narratives are embedded in a matrix of previous statements, stories, and meanings — they connect to, expand, extend, and refer back to narratives already circulating in the culture. If they didn’t connect to existing narratives, we couldn’t make sense of them. Individualism is a deeply imbedded narrative in Western cultures, and it plays a particularly important role in the maintenance of white supremacy. Thus, speaking about white people as a group who have a shared experience specifically as white people is a primary trigger for a white fragility meltdown on a number of levels.”
Source: Robin DiAngelo. Nice Racism. pg. 19-20. 2021.
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 