If we treat people as fragile then they'll act accordingly! A woman in my grad school cohort called me out the other day because she felt a comment I made to her publicly was racist. I reached out to her individually and apologized, explained some of what was going on for me, and talked about the institutional dynamics at play that we were both navigating. It wound up being a really productive conversation and I found some ways to support her in dealing with institutional barriers I'd never have known about if that whole exchange hadn't happened.

I'm not such a fragile person that I'm afraid of being told when I mess up. In this situation, I was being mean because of stuff happening in my own life, and I misused my power. She was right. I told her that. I feel like I did a good job taking accountability and re/building our relationship and we opened a dialogue about some of the tension we were both feeling in our department.

Good things happen when we call things out the way they really are.

I think of myself as a pretty dedicated ally in doing racial justice, but I also know that I can act impulsively, get angry, misuse my power, etc just like anyone else. People of Color in my life can't build real relationships with me or know they can trust me unless they're willing to risk calling me out sometimes, and I'm able to hear their feedback and not get my ego involved. Just the same as I need to call people out who have privilege in other ways.

We don't need to be protected from reality and we absolutely should not be. White women who act fragile that way in the face of criticism are playing on their own fragility and being manipulative.