White Fragility

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:

Quote:

Crying, physically leaving, denying, focusing on intentions, emotionally withdrawing, arguing, seeking absolution [and] avoiding.

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:

Quote:

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.”

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:

Quote:

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.

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:

Quote:

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.

(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:

Quote:

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.

Matt Taibbi:

Quote:

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.”

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3j7Wy45