CSUN Di Angelo White Fragility Summary Essay

• DUE: Sunday, Sept. 13th at 11:59 p.m.
• Reading to Summarize: Diangelo (2018) White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
• Required Length: 2 to 3 pages
• Double-spaced, Times or Times New Roman Font in size 12, 1” margins
• APA formatting and citations are required
• This assignment is to be submitted online via Canvas, not via email

A good summary is both important and challenging. Summaries are important because they serve as the basis for understanding others and for producing many other kinds of writing. Before you can agree or disagree with someone’s argument, you must recognize—and be able to restate—what that person has said. Before you can say something about how the author has (or has not) succeeded in defending his or her argument, you must be able to identify what his or her argument is. It is of no use to offer a response to someone’s argument, unless you have an accurate understanding of what the argument is.

The fundamental purpose of a summary is to restate the thesis or main idea of the reading—and to do so in a way the original author would agree is accurate. A good summary also identifies the reasons the author offers in support of his or her thesis and provides the reader with precise details about the reading being summarized. You may choose to quote the original author directly or to paraphrase him or her but, in either case, you should use in-text citations in APA style.

For this assignment, you will write a summary of an excerpt of Diangelo (2018) White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. You will find this reading under Module/Week 4 Readings. In this summary, you will identify the main point(s) the author makes as well as identify the evidence (s)he uses to support it/them.

Please Keep in Mind:

• Your task in a summary is to restate and describe the author’s argument, not to evaluate it or to respond to it (both of which can come later)
• Likewise, you are concerned with what the author says, not with how (s)he says it (the latter of which you will do in the rhetorical analysis).