Robin DiAngelo Kicks Karen’s Butt (2/4)
Where does racism come from? “Enormous economic interests.”¹ It has served to “legitimize” the enslavement of Black people and their super-exploitation right up to the present. It sustains white privilege and buffers white guilt over it:
Anti-blackness comes from deep guilt about what we have done and continue to do; the unbearable knowledge of our complicity with the profound torture of black people from past to present…. Our projections allow us to bury this trauma by dehumanizing and then blaming the victim. If blacks are not human in the same ways that we white people are human, our mistreatment of them doesn’t count. We are not guilty; they are. If they are bad, it isn’t unfair. In fact, it is righteous…. To put it bluntly, I believe that the white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others. (emphasis in original)²
DiAngelo’s “analysis” is not exactly original and she contributes not a jot beyond these oh-so-tired clichés. Still, it does pose some intriguing questions. White Fragility is presented as a successful therapy to “interrupt” racism. It’s a three-step sequence:
1. The “diversity trainer” directly confronts the white subjects’ racism.
2. The subjects resort to defensive tactics—what DiAngelo dubs “white fragility”—to deflect and neutralize the accusations³, be it by shouting, pouting, crying, or exiting in a huff, in order to “protect, maintain, and reproduce white supremacy.”⁴
3. The “diversity trainer” advises the white subjects how to “build up” their “racial stamina"⁵ so as to tolerate further verbal blows—“feedback”⁶—from her until they come to acquiesce with “racial humility” in the truth of their racism.
Here’s the baffling question: Except to get the damn “sessions” over with, why would the white subjects confess? The genesis, purpose, and objective—the raison d’être—of racism has allegedly been to preserve and buttress the “enormous economic interests” of “white privilege.” What, then, is the motive of white people to repudiate a system that has fantastically enriched them? “Without white people’s interest or effort invested in changing a system that serves them at the expense of others,” DiAngelo observes, “advantage is passed down from generation to generation.”⁷ But, if the system “serves them at the expense of others,” why would they want to change it or not want to pass it down to their children? It can’t be shame. It’s hard to conceive Donald Trump being embarrassed at enriching himself on the backs of Black people. It can’t be fear of ostracism. If whites collectively profit from racism, then, according to DiAngelo, they also stick by each other in “white solidarity.”⁸ It can’t be conscience. Racism penetrates so deeply into our psyche that, according to DiAngelo, we aren’t even aware of it, and, resilient as is our denial mechanism, it would appear we can’t be made aware of it. Even if we could be, would having guilt trump having gold, would pity trump privilege? Would DiAngelo’s “feedback” so psychologically devastate Trump that he’d hand over his hotels to Black Lives Matter and his golf courses to the Nation of Islam? DiAngelo entreats white people to “take responsibility for our racism.”⁹ But why would they take responsibility if the price were disgorgement of their riches? “Because they benefit us,” DiAngelo writes, “racially inequitable relations are comfortable for most white people. Consequently, if we whites want to interrupt this system, we have to get racially uncomfortable and be willing to examine the effects of our racial engagement” (emphasis in original). But if it “benefits us,” why would we want to “interrupt this system” and get “uncomfortable” with racism? Put simply, if white people invented racism to justify their ill-gotten gains, why would they then proceed to disinvent it? It would appear much more likely that, if racism serves the interests of “white people,” they won’t voluntarily let go of it, however many of DiAngelo’s “sessions” they must endure. Except for her “sessions” that “interrupt” it, DiAngelo has precious little to say about how to mitigate racism, let alone overcome it. She counsels her white audience to “get educated,” “build relationships” with “people of color,” and “find out for themselves what they can do.”¹⁰ As to those manifold institutions and structures that are saturated with racism, and that reproduce it even absent human intention or intervention, as if a racially programmed motum perpetuum machina, the ever-dour DiAngelo suddenly turns positively Panglossian as she predicts that, after completing her therapy, “not only would our interpersonal relationships change, but so would our institutions.”¹¹ We’ll presumably all hold hands, chant Om, sing six rounds of Kumbaya and then, brick by brick, dismantle the racist system that’s enriched us for centuries. It’s really that simple. Still, until we reach the Promised Land, it’s an awful bleak landscape. To paraphrase that old McGuire Sisters standby, it’s
But have no fear! Don’t despair! Never say die! There’s a silver lining in the nimbus cloud, a tremulous ray of hope piercing the darkness, a sliver of redemptive possibility. It’s Robin DiAngelo to the rescue! She will lead us out of the desert of white fragility. Granted she might not quite be Moses. But DiAngelo’s as central to and inseparable from her mission as, well, as Sun Myung Moon was to the Unification Church, Jim Jones was to the People’s Temple, and Werner Erhard was to EST. DiAngelo represents herself in White Fragility as sharp as a tack, down as a soul sister, and tough as nails. But is she? She says that “most white people have limited information about what racism is and how it works” and that “the goal of antiracist work is to identify and challenge racism and the misinformation that supports it” (emphasis in original)¹². But what exactly makes DiAngelo qualified for this undertaking? Her formal credentials don’t exactly overwhelm. She earned her PhD in “Multicultural Education” at the University of Washington, was tenured at Westfield State University, and specializes in “Whiteness Studies.” To be frank (as DiAngelo exhorts), I wasn’t aware one could get a PhD in “Multicultural Education,” I’ve never heard of Westfield State University, and Whiteness Studies is as much an academic discipline as Hula-Hoop Studies.¹³ Her chief academic attainment appears to be that she “coined the term White Fragility.” As an epistemological breakthrough, it ranks right up there with the (apropos) coinage of yo-yo. DiAngelo calls herself a “sociologist” but, so far as formal credentials goes, she might just as well call herself a particle physicist. The scholarly citations in White Fragility consist largely of flaky articles published by flaky journals and flaky presses.¹⁴ Her text is littered with observations that give pause as to her mental poise. She purports that “I can get through graduate school without ever discussing racism. I can graduate from law school without ever discussing racism.”¹⁵ I suppose this might be true if she cut all her classes or was on crack while in class. She states that Jackie Robinson is depicted in our national “story line” not as the first Black player to break the major-league color line but as the first Black qualified enough to play in the majors.¹⁶ Maybe so, if she consulted the K.K.K. Guide to American Baseball. She recalls this “cogent example of white fragility”: when a recalcitrant white member in her “session” suffered a “potentially fatal” heart attack, the group’s attention turned to this woman and “away from … the people of color.” Indeed, in the cause of “interrupting” racism, what’s a white casualty or two? She deplores “white women’s tears” during “cross-racial interactions.” Why? “[T]here is a long historical backdrop of black men being tortured and murdered because of a white woman’s distress…. Our tears trigger the terrorism of this history.”¹⁷ White woman crying—White woman crying rape—Black man lynched: who wouldn’t connect these dots? She entreats white people to “break the silence about race and racism with other white people.”¹⁸White people talking to white people about racism: gee whiz, what a novel idea! DiAngelo anticipates that “white readers will have moments of discomfort reading this book.”¹⁹ Agreed. Not because they’re “white readers,” however, but because “this book” is so anguishingly stupid. Okay, DiAngelo isn’t the brightest light on the circuit or the sharpest tool in the shed, but maybe she possesses other exemplary qualities. Although she cautions her white audience not to think “you are different from other white people,”²⁰ and although she concedes her own “deep anti-black feelings that have been inculcated in me since childhood,” ²¹DiAngelo doesn’t shy away from placing herself on a higher plane or “further along” on a “continuum” than your run-of-the-mill brainwashed blighted blanco²². Thus, she observes,
I am seen as somewhat more racially aware than other whites²³.
Her job description is to “raise the racial consciousness of whites” who refuse to “acknowledge that our race gives us advantages” and to “help individuals and organizations see how racism is manifesting itself in their practices and outcomes.” ²⁴She laments “how fragile and ill-equipped most white people are to confront racial tensions.”²⁵ DiAngelo herself is the extraordinary exception to the pathetic rule; she’s way ahead of the curve. “I am in a position to give white people feedback on how their unintentional racism is manifesting itself.”²⁶ She helps you “see your racism”; she “make[s] visible the inevitable racist assumptions held and patterns displayed by white people”; she “discovered … how to give white people feedback on our inevitable and often unconscious racist assumptions.”²⁷ But what enabled her to break free of the “inevitable racist assumptions”? Indeed, how would she even know if she had broken free of “often unconscious racist assumptions and patterns”? It yet more confounds that DiAngelo labels herself a “white progressive” and then goes on to say that “white progressives can be the most difficult for people of color” as “we think we have arrived” yet still “uphold and perpetrate racism.”²⁸ By her own reckoning, she, a white progressive, would appear to be least racially self-aware and least qualified to “raise the racial consciousness of whites.” In other words, beyond her own smug certitude,it’s hard to fathom how DiAngelo could be any less racist than your standard-fare white trash. She herself says that whites who “explicitly avow racism” are “actually more aware of, and honest about, their biases than those of us who consider ourselves open-minded.”²⁹ From whence, then, spring DiAngelo’s supra-racial superpowers? She notes that many whites have “no sustained relationships with people of color,” while extant “cross-racial relationships” are not “authentic.”³⁰ Her own, on the contrary, pass the authenticity test. DiAngelo is cut from the white-groupie mold. Sometimes this type be tough-as-nails, sometimes she be flower-child flaky, sometimes she be demure in a print floral, sometimes she be brazenly exposed or in form-fitting gear. Always, she be a coyly seductive white temptress. She be so down wit da hood dat she be speakin Ebonics like, girl, she be bawn into it. She be givin’ fiery speeches at rallies in solidarity wit her “Black sista’ and brotha’.” Whereas “relationships with white people tend to be less authentic for people of color³¹,” DiAngelo fancy dat peeps of color be trustin’ her.
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.³²
[A woman of color] tells me that although these [racist] dynamics occur daily between white people and people of color, my willingness to repair doesn’t, and that she appreciates this.³³
Sis’ DiAngelo be so hip, she be so chill, she be so fly, they’ll “often give [her] a pass” on a racial slip.³⁴ But what make her be so unique? How she come to pozess “advanced skill” in navigating race relations? Is it cuz she be havin’ Black coworkers? As it happens, so do most white Americans. Maybe she be hangin’ out in the locka’ room at half-time wit de Harlem Globetrotters. Dey all be havin’ a jolly good time, dey be havin’ lotta dem cross-cultural relations, praize de Lawd, Lawdy-lawd, I do declar’! But does that make her “more racially aware than other whites”? DiAngelo mocks the “insidious” racism of pseudo progressive whites who proclaim “I have friends of color, so I can’t be racist.”³⁵ Fair enough. But what shingle be hangin’ on her front lawn if not “Some of my best friends be peeps of culla”? DiAngelo don’t just be chillin’ with Black folk. She don’t just be Jezebel on the back porch listenin’ to her plantation darkies sing ’em spirituals. She be protectin’ Black folk as she “can certainly bear the brunt of a hostile response less painfully than people of color.”³⁶ And she be knowin’ Black folk; she be havin’ a special pipeline to dem; she be channelin’ dem. She might not be Rachel Dolezal passin’ as Black, but DiAngelo be her first cuzzin speakin’ to white people in her Whoopi Goldberg faux dreads what Black folk be feelin’.³⁷ White Fragility is peppered with these Black-knowing asides: “Having to navigate white people’s … racial superiority is a great psychic drain for people of color”; “People of color certainly experience white solidarity as a form of racism”; “The following example illustrates … the frustration that people of color feel”; “For people of color, our tears demonstrate our racial insulation and privilege”; “Trying to explain away our racism does not fool people of color”; and on and on³⁸.
It’s hard to say which grates more: that DiAngelo presumes to be privy to what Blacks feel or that she presumes to be privy to what all Blacks feel. In the meantime, DiAngelo admonishes white people to show “humility” when they talk about race;³⁹ she rues that “white Northerners who came down South to save black people had some patronizing or condescending attitudes”; she chastises the “racism” of a white woman who presumed that “she could best speak for a black man”; she cautions those whites who believe that they are “different from other white people” on race matters to “stop and take a breath.”⁴⁰ Speaking of which, it takes one’s breath away the lack of self-awareness of this coach in self-awareness. DiAngelo psychoanalyzes that white racism can wear the mask of benevolence as “we also use blacks to feel warmhearted and noble. We are drawn to those who … we can ‘save’ from the horrors of their black lives with our abundance and kindness.” She goes on to observe that in one strain of racist ideology, “white people are the saviors of black people … noble, courageous, and morally superior to other whites.”⁴¹ It is a tribute to the power of self-righteous purblindness that DiAngelo doesn’t see the irony in these words. In her antiracist rage, DiAngelo can also be unintentionally revealing of the white demons astir in her intracranial space. She tells the convoluted story of a white couple who reportedly purchased an inexpensive home and then a handgun. The upshot? “I immediately knew they had bought a home in a black neighborhood.” This brilliant deduction doesn’t prevent DiAngelo in the next breath from decrying white racism that “associated crime with people of color” and that assumes “black neighborhoods are inherently dangerous and criminal.”⁴² Didn’t she just do that? She tells another anecdote about academic colleagues at her new job who caution her against moving into certain neighborhoods. “I now knew where the people of color were concentrated.”⁴³ It did turn out these areas were half non-white, but maybe they were also highcrime areas. It’s not always and only about race—unless you’re a racist. She excoriates “the glee the white collective derives from blackface and depictions of blacks as apes and gorillas.”⁴⁴ How can the “white collective” not include her, or is she depersonalizing and distancing herself from her own demons by projecting them onto the “white collective”? One can’t help but recall Jean-Paul Sartre’s description of the antisemite who, as it were, gets off on his own obscene desires while he denounces Jews:
He can glut himself to the point of obsession with the recital of obscene or criminal actions which excite and satisfy his perverse leanings; but since at the same time he attributes them to those infamous Jews on whom he heaps his scorn, he satisfies himself without being compromised.
Replace “Jews” with “whites,” and, voilà, you have DiAngelo. While inveighing against the manifold perversions of those awful white people—they delight in grotesque images of Blacks as apes and gorillas—she excites and satisfies her own depraved leanings “without being compromised.” It doesn’t seem impertinent at this juncture to wonder if DiAngelo is the best choice for “diversity trainer.” It is also cause for wonder why Black people even need her. Her function in a typical meeting is to provide “feedback” to white members of the group as to why Black group members find this or that remark of theirs to be racist. Are Black people so inarticulate, so fragile, that they need DiAngelo to act as their interlocutor? It might also be wondered whether Black participants are nearly as thin-skinned and hypersensitive as she makes them out to be. Unlike DiAngelo, they aren’t paid per microaggression.
WF, p. 16.
WF, pp. 94-95.
DiAngelo asserts that in accusing white people of racism, she’s “not saying that you are immoral.” (WF, p. 13) But if racism emerged and persists to justify the enslavement and exploitation of Black people, and if every white person is implicated in this plunder, how could she not be accusing them of immorality?
WF, p. 113; see also p. 112—“White fragility functions as a form of bullying; I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me—no matter how diplomatically you try to do so—that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again. White fragility keeps people of color in line and ‘in their place.’ In this way, it is a powerful form of white racial control.”
WF, pp. 2, 14, 125
WF, p. 125—“Racism is the norm rather than an aberration. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion.”
WF, p. 66
WF, pp. 57-58—“White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic…. White solidarity requires both silence about anything that exposes the advantages of the white position and tacit agreement to remain racially united in the protection of white supremacy.”
WF, p. 113
WF, pp. 144. Because “white identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy,” DiAngelo also aspires “to be ‘less white.’” (WF, pp. 149-50) Fortunately, she has earned enough royalties from White Fragility to take out a lifetime membership in White Self-Hate Tanning Salon (a.k.a. WHITE SHTS).
WF, p. 144.
30 WF, p. 127.
The reigning guru of “Whiteness Studies” is David Roediger. He heaped breathless praise on White Fragility in a Los Angeles Times review: “White Fragility fascinatingly reads as one-part jeremiad and one-part handbook … mordant … inspirational … keen perception … deep commitment … uncommonly honest … passionately committed” (6 September 2018). For this travesty alone, he and the whole “studies” should be promptly retired.
It might also be noticed that DiAngelo’s English is an atrocity. For example, she speaks of “programs intended to ameliorate the most basic levels of discrimination,” “a program was instituted to help ameliorate this discrimination,” “reinscribing rather than ameliorating racism,” “they should be focused on ameliorating racism,” “ameliorating a white woman’s distress,” etc. (WF, pp. 30, 91, 132, 134, 137) Before teaching education, DiAngelo might consider first getting one.
WF, p. 8.
WF, p. 26.
WF, pp. 111, 132.
WF, p. 148.
WF, p. 14.
WF, p. 11.
WF, p. 90.
BlancX?
42 WF, p. 152.
43 WF, pp. 63, 73.
WF, p. 110.
WF, p. 116.
WF, pp. 117, 123.
WF, p. 5.
WF, p. 47
WF, pp. 3, 31-32, 135; see also p. 79—“Even an avowed white nationalist who would march openly in the streets chanting ‘blood and soil!’ can interact with people of color, and very likely does so,” and p. 82—“How many white people who marched in the 1960s had authentic relationships with African-Americans?”
WF, p. 146
WF, p. 131.
WF, p. 140
WF, p. 152
WF, pp. 43, 121.
WF, p. 151.
DiAngelo observes that “in a racist society, the desired direction is always toward whiteness and away from being perceived as a person of color.” (WF, p. xvi) But as she and Dolezal illustrate, not “always.”
WF, pp. 55, 58, 131, 136, 147.
WF, p. 12—“Over and over, I emphasized the importance of white people having racial humility and of not exempting ourselves from the unavoidable dynamics of racism.”
WF, pp. 14, 82, 133.
WF, pp. 96-98
WF, pp. 44, 62, 98.
WF, p. 46
WF, p. 94.