White Fragility 101

Baruch prof sues over race-training push

White is wrong at Baruch College, where minority faculty members in one department demanded their Caucasian counterparts undergo “white fragility” training to be “better people,” according to a lawsuit filed against CUNY by a white professor.

The demands were made by the Faculty of Color Caucus, a group of educators in the Manhattan CUNY school’s Sociology and Anthropology Department who accused white colleagues of racism “for no other reason than their skin color,” the anthropology professor, Robin Root (inset), claims in court papers.

The group presented a report last spring that “levied outlandish accusations at white faculty in general” without citing specific incidents of discrimination, Root charges in the Manhattan Supreme Court suit.

Root claims she was singled out in a meeting and ignored by administrators when she tried to file a discrimination complaint.

“It was pretty heartbreaking,” Root, 53, told The Post.

The Faculty of Color Caucus demanded that white educators attend training, read and discuss Robin DiAngelo’s book “White Fragility” and “learn to reflect on how ‘white normativity’ plays out in the department,” the complaint says.

No formal training has been held.

“I thought we were operating as a team here, to address these issues,” Root said. “Now we’re marking out who is white and who is not white, and you’ve decided without knowing anything about me, without knowing about my background, that I am only white.”

One caucus member declined to even discuss discrimination with white co-workers, because “all of you behave and practice at different levels of whiteness,” the suit alleges.

Root says she was the one who suggested DiAngelo’s book to colleagues months earlier.

“I have no objection to reading a book that I actually recommended the department read,” she said.

When she complained of discrimination, Baruch’s chief diversity officer also told her to read “White Fragility,” and another dean refused to meet with her, Root alleged.

Root claims administrators later agreed she had “been mistreated” but told her she should withdraw the complaint anyway to keep the school from looking bad.

A member of the Faculty of Color Caucus, which consists of three nonwhite members of the 11-member department, declined to comment. CUNY also declined to comment.

Root, a Fulbright scholar who has been at Baruch since 2004, seeks unspecified damages for discrimination and retaliation.