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White Fragility

Brainster

Penultimate Amazing
Brainster
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May 26, 2006
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Has anybody else encountered this "impressively crazy" book, which is currently at or near the top of the Amazon and NY Times Bestseller lists?

Robin DiAngelo is a (white) diversity consultant, and she writes about the problems she encounters with other white people in her training sessions:

Crying, physically leaving, denying, focusing on intentions, emotionally withdrawing, arguing, seeking absolution [and] avoiding.
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These are all expressions of white fragility which must be overcome according to DiAngelo. Others have noted that DiAngelo has created a logical trap for readers and seminar participants; if they disagree with her they are demonstrating their fragility and perpetuating racism.

Her version of the story of Jackie Robinson is rather eye-opening to say the least:

The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”
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Is there any baseball fan who doesn't know that Jackie Robinson was the first black man whites allowed to play in the majors? Who doesn't know that players like Cool Papa Bell and Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson had MLB-ready skills decades before Robinson? It's a completely bizarre reimagining of the story which calls into question her grasp of the subject matter.

DiAngelo, while assuring us that she doesn't think any of the white people she mentions in her anecdotes are racist in what she considers the old-fashioned definition (people who are mean to persons of other races), certainly has a low opinion of them:

For example, many white participants who lived in white suburban neighborhoods and had no sustained relationships with people of color were absolutely certain that they held no racial prejudice or animosity. Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a matter of nice people versus mean people. Most appeared to believe that racism ended in 1865 with the end of slavery.
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Seriously? Anybody who believes that racism ended in 1865 may not be a racist, but they are certainly a moron. Actually I'll take that back; they would have to be a racist to believe it because nobody could really be that stupid.

This definitely raised an eyebrow:

This book is intended for us, for white progressives who so often—despite our conscious intentions—make life so difficult for people of color. I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color. I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir,” or already “gets it.” White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived.
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(Italics in original)

I think what DiAngelo means is that white progressives are the biggest pains in the ass in her training seminars.

The book is starting to get some needed attention. John McWhorter, writing in the Atlantic:

DiAngelo has convinced university administrators, corporate human-resources offices, and no small part of the reading public that white Americans must embark on a self-critical project of looking inward to examine and work against racist biases that many have barely known they had.
I am not convinced. Rather, I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract. Despite the sincere intentions of its author, the book diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us. This is unintentional, of course, like the racism DiAngelo sees in all whites. Still, the book is pernicious because of the authority that its author has been granted over the way innocent readers think.
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Matt Taibbi:

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual ********* as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.

If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”
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Note to self : form a new company hiring all the currently unemployed restaurant/hotel workers to sew hair-shirts. Hopefully supply will be able to keep up with anticipated demand.
 
It's part of the same anti-racism activism that believes working hard, being punctual, keeping your emotions under control, delayed gratification, planning for the future etc are "whiteness" and shouldn't give one an advantage in a non-racist society. There was a local government training course teaching this to whites only recently. In Seattle, I think. It caused a bit of excitement. :-) The joke is always that these people are effectively self hating, marxist, white supremacists.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and it struck me as a bit like Special Relativity and the realization that if the speed of light must remain constant, time and space had to give way. If one is going to insist that outcomes must be equally, but "marginalized" people changing can't be considered as part of the solution, then necessarily you end up with this.
 
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I think I saw some pushback against her from other activists because, while the message was right, she is white.
 
shuttlt said:
It's part of the same anti-racism activism that believes working hard, being punctual, keeping your emotions under control, delayed gratification, planning for the future etc are "whiteness" and shouldn't give one an advantage in a non-racist society.
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I wouldn't say race but those are definitely cultural and pretty arbitrary assessors of work competence.
 
You want to see white fragility, just say the words "white privilege" and dare to suggest that racism exists and has negative consequences and it is plenty easy to see.
 
Well, Matt Taibbi is probably best-known for his denial of Russia interfering in the 2016 US election, so I'd take anything he has to say with a pinch of salt.

As for the book itself, I know nothing about it other than what's been posted in this thread. It may be as intellectually void as it's being characterised. I agree that her characterisation of Jackie Robinson's story (bearing in mind that I am neither American, nor a baseball fan, so I am speaking about just the above-quoted paragraph on its own terms) seems way off, and that most people would see the "white people didn't allow black people to play" part of it as implicit.

That said, I do think that it's true that everybody has biases - many that they will not know about - and that these biases are in part a product of their environment, both current and historical. It's good for people to try to examine these and to work to mitigate them as much as is humanly possible.
 
Brainster said:
I think what DiAngelo means is that white progressives are the biggest pains in the ass in her training seminars.
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I would see it as her laying a Kafka Trap for her intended audience. If you say you are a racist, then you are a racist. If you say you aren't a racist, you are a worse racist. If somebody objects to my teaching, they are a racist. Better choose option 1 and admit you are a racist.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
You want to see white fragility, just say the words "white privilege" and dare to suggest that racism exists and has negative consequences and it is plenty easy to see.
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Pardon me for a moment while I cry and run away and focus on intentions.
 
*Deadpan* Wow you went on the internet and found one white progressive that uses vague self hating language. That's like finding a needle in a haystack.
 
shuttlt said:
It's part of the same anti-racism activism that believes working hard, being punctual, keeping your emotions under control, delayed gratification, planning for the future etc are "whiteness" and shouldn't give one an advantage in a non-racist society.
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It's not only that - even things such as objective, rational, linear thinking are white concepts. That means the purpose of this discussion board is to further and support white supremacy, you know!

I heard John McWhorter on a podcast recently and he called White Fragility the worst book that has ever been written. I think it's just the codification (for profit) of a whole genre of anti-racism marxist postmodern claptrap that has been taught and promoted for years.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Forget "encountered"; has anyone commenting on it actually read this book?
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Not entirely finished, I skipped the chapter "White Women's Tears". I'll be honest, I had a tough time getting past this opening anecdote:

When another police shooting of an unarmed black man occurred, my workplace called for an informal lunch gathering of people who wanted to connect and find support. Just before the gathering, a woman of color pulled me aside and told me that she wanted to attend but she was “in no mood for white women’s tears today.” I assured her that I would handle it. As the meeting started, I told my fellow white participants that if they felt moved to tears, they should please leave the room. I would go with them for support, but I asked that they not cry in the mixed group. After the discussion, I spent the next hour explaining to a very outraged white woman why she was asked not to cry in the presence of the people of color.
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Are you ready for why?

White women’s tears in cross-racial interactions are problematic for several reasons connected to how they impact others. For example, there is a long historical backdrop of black men being tortured and murdered because of a white woman’s distress, and we white women bring these histories with us. Our tears trigger the terrorism of this history, particularly for African Americans.
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:eek:
 
Brainster said:
White women’s tears in cross-racial interactions are problematic for several reasons connected to how they impact others. For example, there is a long historical backdrop of black men being tortured and murdered because of a white woman’s distress, and we white women bring these histories with us. Our tears trigger the terrorism of this history, particularly for African Americans.
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:eek:
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sir drinks-a-lot said:
It's the number 2 top selling book on Amazon right now. Just ahead of "How to be an anti-racist". And no, I didn't make that up.
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I understand "anti-racist" is a specific from this ideology that doesn't just mean you are against racism. I'll bet money it's another book that says "all white people are racist, expecting people to work hard and be rational is racist, and the solution is communism."
 
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