After it was published in 2018, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility received fawning reviews from The New Yorker and Publishers Weekly on its way to becoming a New York Times bestseller. Well-intentioned white people bought the book in droves and the titular phrase became ubiquitous, used as a way to explain or attack white people who protested when accused of racism. Now, as more Americans are asking how they can fight racism in response to the appalling deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, White Fragility has seen a resurgence, this time topping the bestseller list.
But while people’s desire for valuable insight about race-related issues is laudable, White Fragility cannot satisfy that need. The book does not offer profound insight into the souls of white people. Rather, White Fragility is religion masquerading as knowledge. DiAngelo’s conception of white fragility isn’t hard won wisdom. It’s an unprovable and unfalsifiable theory, deceptively framed to convince readers of their own guilt. DiAngelo relies on rhetorical tricks and skewed interpretations of ambiguous events to deceive readers, in the same way a zealot tries to gain converts.
You’re Either A Fragile Racist, or A Fragile Racist
Throughout White Fragility DiAngelo tries to convince readers of two things. First, DiAngelo argues that white people are inescapably racist, writing, “All white people are invested in and collude with racism,” and 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.”
Second, DiAngelo argues that any white person who is reluctant to accept their inescapable racism is wrong, and that their “white fragility” blinds them to their own racism. In DiAngelo’s own words, because white people are, “Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race.” This fragility purportedly explains why, “people who identify as white are so difficult in conversations regarding race.”
It’s not difficult to see why the theory of white fragility might catch on. Race is a sensitive subject that many people of all races are uncomfortable discussing. Furthermore, white people publicly accused of racism risk social ostracization and professional ruin. The idea that some white people don’t respond well to conversations about or accusations of racism is not surprising. But though some white people may exhibit a degree of what DiAngelo calls fragility, her grandiose theory as applied to all or even most white people has two fatal flaws.
First, DiAngelo’s theory of White Fragility is unfalsifiable. It is impossible for someone to prove that they are not fragile, just as it is impossible for someone to prove they are not possessed by a demon. One could play mad libs with racial groups and nouns-”Asian Insecurity,” “Black Hostility,” etc.-and there would be no way for members of those groups to prove they are not insecure or hostile.
More insidiously, DiAngelo frames her theory of white fragility such that any denial of her theory is interpreted as proof of its validity. For example, DiAngelo writes that,
“The mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses. These include emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation. These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy. I conceptualize this process as white fragility. Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement.”
In other words, if DiAngelo accuses you of fragility and you disagree with her in any way-through argument, silence, or withdrawal-your reaction is considered proof of your fragility. DiAngelo leaves white readers with only two options. Either acknowledge your fragility, which proves DiAngelo’s theory, or deny your fragility, which according to DiAngelo, also proves her theory. This is a logical fallacy known as a Kafkatrap. If our legal system worked this way, no person accused of a crime would ever be acquitted because their denial would prove their guilt.
If You Don’t See Racism Everywhere, You Aren’t Looking Hard Enough
DiAngelo uses more logical fallacies to support her second core theory that all white people are racist. For example, DiAngelo lays another trap that makes it impossible for white people to speak ill of any neighborhood with high crime rates in which many people of color reside. When DiAngelo’s friends discouraged her from living in an “unsafe” neighborhood, DiAngelo later discovered that the neighborhood had mostly black residents. From this, she concluded that “unsafe” was simply code for black, and that “my fellow whites had communicated the racial boundaries to me.” Did you spot the logical fallacy?
If DiAngelo’s friends had told her not to live in the neighborhood because it had mostly black residents, she could call them out for overt racism. But even when her friends referred to the safety of the neighborhood, with no mention of race whatsoever, DiAngelo attributed that statement to racism as well. There was no way for her friends to mention the neighborhood’s relatively high crime rates without DiAngelo finding them guilty of racism.
More often than using Kafkatraps, DiAngelo supports her theory that all white people are racist by interpreting every ambiguous event to support her conclusions, despite other plausible explanations. In one section of White Fragility DiAngelo describes an incident in which a white female teacher had two black students at her desk. The teacher prefaced something she said with the word “girl.” One student felt that the use of the word “girl” was racist. The other student disagreed, saying that the teacher called all her students “girl” regardless of their race.
Any reasonable person would conclude that if the teacher called every student — white, black, Asian, Latinx — “girl,” the teacher’s use of the world resides somewhere between “not racist” and “open to interpretation.” But DiAngelo reached a different conclusion, demonizing the teacher’s lack of concern for the offended student’s feelings, and implying that the teacher was arrogant for thinking the use of “girl” was not racist. To be clear, while teachers should listen to their students’ concerns, there is no proof this teacher’s word choice was racially motivated. And ironically, DiAngelo is guilty of everything she criticizes the teacher for-arrogance and lack of concern-because she completely dismisses the other black student who did not think the comment was racist.
DiAngelo uses similarly dubious logic when discussing the President Barack Obama’s tenure in office. DiAngelo quotes Carol Anderson who argued that even though Obama was elected twice, America’s overriding racism was self-evident because, “voting rights were severely curtailed, the federal government was shut down, and more than once the Office of the President was shockingly, openly, and publicly disrespected by other elected officials.”
But every single one of those things happened to other presidents besides Obama. Both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump endured longer shutdowns. Voting rights have been under attack for decades. Every president with the possible exception of George Washington has been disrespected by other elected officials. Of course racism and racists still existed during Obama’s presidency, as they do today. But DiAngelo must overstate her case to prove her flawed theory, which is why she sees racism behind every thought, utterance, and action.
Master Manipulation
White Fragility is full of similar fallacies, anecdotes, and on occasion, outright lies. DiAngelo, for example describes Congress as 90 percent white, which hasn’t been true for decades. But perhaps its most outrageous passages are DiAngelo’s vicious attacks on white people.
In one section, DiAngelo berates the very type of person who is likely reading her book, writing, “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.” In another, she mocks white people for not knowing what to do about racism, writing, “What has enabled you to be a full, educated, professional adult and not know what to do about racism?” “How have we managed not to know, when the information is all around us?”
One can’t help wonder how DiAngelo would respond to similar inquiries. Does DiAngelo have the solutions to sexism, health care, or immigration reform? If not, how could she be so ignorant. The answers are all around us!
The best that can be said in White Fragility’s defense is that DiAngelo occasionally makes valid points. She points out how the preponderance of white directors in film and television leads to superficial portrayals of non-white characters. She also argues that it is easier for white people to navigate spaces and move seamlessly through them without having to think about their race, which is true. But these insights are hardly Earth-shattering revelations, and they have nothing to do with DiAngelo’s central claims. More importantly, occasional truths do not outweigh the damage of DiAngelo’s big lies.
What ultimately makes White Fragility so manipulative is the way it exploits the good intentions of its readers. White people read the book because they care about fighting racism and being allies to people of color. They are ready to listen to a purported expert like DiAngelo. But instead of providing genuine expertise, DiAngelo uses Kafkatraps and fallacies to convince white people they are ignorant, racist and fragile. Then she travels the country, charging thousands of dollars an hour to cure white people of the ailment she diagnosed them with. It’s a con as old as time.
Racism By Any Other Name
If a similar book were written about any other racial group-Asian Insecurity, Black Hostility, Latinx Insensitivity, etc., not only would the book never become a bestseller, it would never be published. People would see the book for what it is — an absurd generalization that attributes negative qualities to an entire race of people — the very definition of racism.
But White Fragility has succeeded because we are in a unique historical moment in which our discourse of race-related issues has become so irrational that people can no longer tell the difference between scholarship and nonsense, or between antiracism and religion. The battle against racism and discrimination is vitally important. But we cannot win that battle with leaders like DiAngelo peddling intellectual fraud like White Fragility as the answer. Using facts, logic, and critical thinking is the only way we’ve ever solved our problems, and it’s the only way we ever will.
This article was used with permission from The Logical Liberal.
65 comments
Racist!
Not that I believe her theory, but for the sake of argument, let’s say she’s right. Who in their right mind would give up an advantage? Why would anyone in a privileged class give up their privilege?
The Left sees the world as being engaged in a power struggle between groups. Oppressors and the oppressed. They call for revolution, and after the revolution, the oppressed become the oppressors and the former oppressors are now the oppressed.
So who would voluntarily give up their spot in the dominant class?
Did nobody notice that a fictional bad guy wrote an introduction? Keyser Soze from “The Usual Suspects”. That’s as far as I got. I might read it for fun, but the author clearly doesn’t mean it seriously.
Where, in DiAngelo’s book?
“[De Angelo] also argues that it is easier for white people to navigate spaces and move seamlessly through them without having to think about their race, which is true.”
WHERE? Where is this true? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? The banlieues of Paris? China? Detroit?
In the 1990s I once made a wrong turn and found myself driving under a bridge in Miami where mobs of black addicts lived. This was an area that a black friend living in Miami warned me as a white visitor from another country to never go near. I did not move seamlessly through this part of the United States of America without having to think about my white race. I was forced to be aware of my whiteness by the hostile black mob who screamed racist anti-white slurs at my car as I raced by terrified for my life.
Con artists like DeAngelo are human garbage. They’ve been sucking human blood since the caves. It’s the white “woke” elite hypocrites who prop up such race grifting scum that are the real issue. What to do about these white hypocrites elites is the real world problem that needs real world concrete solutions immediately. Not theory or opinion or more talk but solutions.
I would think that most places outside of a few majority minority areas are easier to navigate as a white person due to the fact that whites are a majority of the country. I went to an all black church one time, and I definitely did feel out of place at first, so I can understand why a black person may feel that way in majority white areas (which are more prevalent).
An African-American pastor, missionary and Seminary teacher tells it like it is on Ms. Di Angelo’s hatred.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuSMvIVtd0A
If he can define it and categorize it so easily, why can’t the White Churches?
Because they are apostate, or they need to feel guilty over something, since they have removed grace and sin from their minds. FYI, people
She said she was specifically speaking to the people of color and asked white people to simply listen. Imagine telling blacks I am specifically talking to the white people now you you people of color shut up and listen. That is basically what they are saying. Tight now I am just peaking to the people that get it so you white people sit there and shut up. This woman said in a class remove this term from you conversations “I am not racist”. Basically what that means in her opinion every white person is a racist and they need to shut up taker her courses and do what we’re told.
I think we can sum her her “intellectual” premise in one question. “Answer only Yes or No. (Remember we will take any other answer or silence or the refusal to engage with the question as the admittance of guilt). Have you stopped beating up your partner?”
She is a filthy fraud and a hypocrite by any measure and a disgrace to American values. Her motives are to live the good life a and amass a large profit. She hob nobs with corporate executives and wealthy elites and spreads the false claim all whites born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Millions of whites are homeless today. As well as blacks. Millions of Americans are shafted by the those in power. Whites pay most of the taxes and many die in debt and misery. This privileged phony should speak for herself.
She would have right at home in 15th Century Spain , interrogating and torturing innocents or those deemed heretic or deviating from the norms set by rabid fanatics or in Stalinist Russia forcing those who disagree with her dogma and hatred( class warfare then , racial strife now) to publicly confess all their crimes, imaginary or real, and zealously sending them to the NKVD death squads. The only fragility I fear is the mental fragility of all the guilt-ridden, mindless privileged Whites who will purchase her scam work treat it like Gospel and enrich this con artist. She is one of these arrogant and self absorbed zealots who pretends to speak on behalf of the oppressed but in reality just listens to her own voice.
just heard this woman on the radio. The language was repulsive but i would hear her out. She loved saying racism. I found her arrogant, condescending, and self loathing. I am not white, and have some objectivity. She is so patronizing it is nauseous. She holds herself as the savior of colored folk, and the prosecutor of all white people. Worst than the perceived harm she accuses others of is the hate and division she perpetuates. She is part of the army of liberals who do for the coloured that she messages they are incapable of. I admire people like Candice Owen and Larry Elder who do self reflection instead of blaming others. DiAngelo does all people a disservice in her zeal to sow her dogma. Respect cannot be demanded or given, it can only be earned.
Has anyone else noticed that “white privilege” and “white fragility” are concepts invented by exceptionally wealthy people, born into the highest partician economic elite families, daughters of Bell Labs corporate execs, and graduates of institutions of by and for the wealthy such as Smith College, Radcliffe, U. London, etc, have six or even seven figure incomes, have unassaibale job security, or are childless woke tenured faculty, who always seem to eager to attribute THEIR lived experience to “white” (it’s not a race or an ethnicity so wtf) poor and lower middle class people? We who were born into lower class families and who struggled to achieve our modest success, who live with the economic uncertainties of the brave new world created by neoliberals and neocons alike, are so very grateful to have narcissitic liberal yuppies paint targets on our backs. It’s almost like Ms. DiAngelo and her ilk are trying to rope in more potential targets for the collective reckoning for “privilege-guilt” when, should the day come, enough people believe DiAngelo’s screed that they decide to redistribute her wealth.
White Fragility says admit to being racist or else you prove that you are a racist. This sort of logic will work for those who are committed to the theory that all whites are racist but that’s about it.
It is not dissimilar to the AGW crowd who claim, ex post facto, that every climate anomaly or natural catastrophy is proof of catastrophic climate change.
well this anti white BS will reuslt in whites in rundown conditong being forced to turn to crime and every anti white racist being persecuted and killed by criminals
Prior post should read “if the author had been Black?” My bad!
Is it productive to ask 1) what would be the response a) in this forum and b) among general readership if the author had been White? (I thought she was Black until maybe halfway through the comments.) And 2) would, or could, the book even have been published and so well-received by people who think they need this “therapy?”
Great analogy. I am reading this because I want to learn about how to improve my shortcomings I might subconsciously be unaware of and bring them to awareness to repair this in myself. I’ve never thought of myself as racist or prejudice but I’m hearing of experiences from black friends who confide that they still experience discrimination. Regrettably, so far, I’m only hearing I can’t fix it and no action or inaction is correct.
In the good/bad chapter, she states that nobody can really avoid racism or some degree of prejudice attitudes, which I thought could be accurate. We might all have some guilt, but I grew up in a low income home/neighborhood, and had some good experiences and not so good. I was sometimes mistreated when I was the minority. I grew up thinking maybe this was good that I’d experienced this because it left me more aware and open to see it & speak up if the tables were turned. But when she describes someone who grew up like me, she says that my experiences didn’t matter and didn’t open my eyes as I thought and gave it another name, but insisted this wasn’t racism. I’m really confused by this, because I really hope to identify ways we can love each other better and change what has been broken. I’m over 3/4 through the book and so far, I’ve only heard that nothing I do will help or be right. I hope the last few chapters give me some of what I’m hoping to glean.
Outstanding article. WE need more like this!
All of this critique is true, except DiAngelo was correct about Obama receiving less respect than prior Presidents and being seen as illegitimate by many of his political opponents.
I guess you never heard of George W Bush. He was trashed mercilessly. Far worse than Obama got.
Re: Obama, I’ll stipulate for the purpose of discussion that he received less respect as POTUS
Was that bcuz he was black or bcuz he was duplicitous? he campaigned as a Political moderate, a practical visionary, a supreme orator, the next JFK (reason I voted for him) but then as president he revealed he was indeed the radical leftist that his Political opponents said he was.
I remember that as I voted for him in 2008, I thought
“be great if he wins, it’d put an end to the race hustlers cries of Racism everywhere in the US” That might’ve been the first time I even realized he was black, I didn’t vote for him bcuz he was black I voted for him bcuz I didn’t care he was black. I’m white but that’s irrelevant, I follow Dr King’s dream of a color blind society. People judged by the quality of their character not the color of their skin
Well we know how that worked out. Obama validated CRT’s toxic Race Essentialism, even promoted it and let it take hold in the US bureaucray. During his 2nd term race relations in the US deteriorated in ways that IMHO Obama was directly responsible for, at least he could have prevented, instead he built the foundation for what we see today.
Btw, Robin Deangelo is a white Supremacist. Full Stop
Jim
Oh, I wish the quotes had references/page numbers! This book was on a huge source list (72 sources, plus a list of people/websites to follow) emailed from my church. I really don’t want have to read this whole book, much less put more money in her pocket.
But if I’m going to discuss it, I need to have all the facts and and an airtight case. I need to be able to point to the pages where these things are said. Maybe I’ll have to get it at the library and then try to find these quotes. If I do end up discussing it, I want to be able to say, “Open your copy of the book. See? I was not lying. It’s right there!”
(I’m not saying that’s any guarantee of influencing anyone away from this book and its ideas. But at least I will have my facts straight and can’t be accused of making up things or misrepresenting her.)
I will have to read this when I have more time. But thank you for covering it.
I saw a clip of the author speaking and was horrified. If she wants to admit she’s a racist, fine. But she has no right to slander an entire group of people that way. Disgusting!
I’m very surprised that Cognitive Bias is not discussed more in the critiques of Conflict Theory. It is replete with Cognitive Distortions – in ways that social psychologists have documented for decades. Now, it seems, many of these researchers seem willing to buy in to these obvious thinking traps and logical fallacies – and help promote them to a level of legitimacy. Profound.
I read this book last year and found it useful to make sense of the absolute inability of many white people (especially liberals and progressives) to see their own complicity in othering and micro-aggressions experienced by black people. We’ve been conditioned to think that racism is only in overt visible forms of verbal or physical violence and just being nice is the key and so we can absolve ourselves if we are polite and cordial. The ‘good person = not racist / racist – bad person’ binary is exhausting and I’ve had some tough conversations with people trying to explain this. When challenged people can sometimes become alarmingly angry and dismissive and centre themselves and their own emotions which makes progress with some people a real challenge. That as well as the idea that prejudice is the same as racism and the outright denial that white supremacy exists by some.
By the time I read this book I’d already done a huge amount of learning about the invention/construction of race as an instrument of power so when I started reading I didn’t think it was going to be of any use to me however as it went on it gave me some good insights here and there so I do recommend it. I think this book is purely an add on as it doesn’t offer anything about the function of race, it’s history and how policies keep it alive and allows it so redefine and disguise itself. I didn’t really have any ‘fragility’ either but I definitely found it a useful read.
DiAngelo’s is the classic proof of how in contemporary neo-Marxism Marx’s idea that class is the driver of history has been replaced with Hitler’s idea that race is the driver of history. So you’re right that “the invention/construction of race [is] an instrument of power”. But the drive to power we’re seeing here is not about “anti-racism” (because, of course, DiAngelo is not an anti-racist – she merely uses a fake anti-racism for a larger political purpose). What we actually see in DiAngelo is the neo-Marxist attempt to displace whites (because whites – especially the white working class – have failed the neo-Marxists as the revolutionary class) and to replace them with non-whites. The hope is that the non-whites will at last carry out the revolution Marx promised, and at last put the would-be commissar class (i.e. people like DiAngleo) in power.
Anyone else quite liberal/progressive but really off put by this book? I actually haven’t read it but I’ve watched a few interviews where she discusses her.. *thesis* and felt something was a little weird and condescending about the rhetoric, but I’m often terrified of questioning – even in my MIND – leftist ideas around social justice out of fear of being ostracized and seen as racist lol. So I just told myself that that was a natural normal white fragility reaction and it’s all part of the process of dismantling my unearned white privilege.. God what is happening?!? I truly care about the movement for racial equity in the US (and yes I know saying this does nothing but bear with me) I just DO NOT see how this emotionally manipulative language is helpful in manifesting this cause.
What you experience is not White Fragility but just emotional manipulation.
Don’t give in.
You say you are Progressive. What kind of Progress is that if a person is afraid to voice their opinion? Your peers may consider themselves as Progressive but if they instill fear of differing opinions then they are anything but.
It’s also likely that there are others like you. Repeating the mantra and talking points without true conviction, just to avoid being outcast. I believe that we will eventually reach a tipping point where these voices will start to be heard and the Woke pyramid of lies and abuse will collapse. Only question is how much damage will have been done by then.
Young Hegelian, Philosopha doctrine gone viral. Everything is defined using the Young (and Younger) Hegelian’s Applied Dialectics. Every single thing is about war in antithesis, to destroy a Thesis .
Wars in Antithesis wielded daily by the Philosopha (Communists, Socialists, Progressives)
Gender Wars: Female VS Male (Male = Thesis)
Race Wars: Kedar VS Adam or in dialectic terms (Black VS White) … (White = Thesis)
Wealth Wars: 99% VS 1% …. (1% = Thesis)
Belief Wars: Atheists & Scientists VS Christians (Christian = Thesis)
The individual most hated by the Philosopha (Caucasian Male, who is also wealthy and a Christian)
If any this sounds familiar … it should…. its the identical methodology used by the philosopha (3rd Reich (National Socialists) against the Jews.
But aren’t these things exactly what Jesus Christ warned of in his sermon on the mount?
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what [shall be] the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?
5 And Jesus answering them began to say,
Take heed lest any [man] deceive you: 6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am [Christ]; and shall deceive many. (many philosopha today proclaim to be Christians, they are in fact liars, they believe in biblical text through the prism of Applied Dialectics… its call liberation theology)…
7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for [such things] must needs be; but the end [shall] not [be] yet (What wars? see Daniel 7 and 11). Persia/Media, King of the North (Seleucid like), King of the South (Ptolemy like)).
8 For nation shall rise against nation (Nation in Greek = Ethnos),
and kingdom against kingdom (Kingdom in Greek =basileia) :
and there shall be earthquakes (Greek = seismos) in divers places (Luke text reads Megas Seismos) , and there shall be famines (see Amos 8, for the definition of Famine)
and troubles (Greek =taraché which means sedition. rolling as water or a mob) :
these [are] the beginnings of sorrows.
With only 48 years maximum left (2068) in this final generation and 9,5 years remaining until the final generation reaches 80 years of age (2028)… things will start to occur more rapidly.
The philosopha are out to deceive and overthrow America, in their quest for a global communist state…. However the philosopha have overplayed their hand this time and they will find globalism a very difficult task to achieve in 2020. People in America don’t align with murder, rape, violence, lawlessness, destruction and anarchy. Since there is only one global state in all prophecy, its not logical the philosopha will be successful in their attempts to overthrow American through the use of Applied Dialectics.
There will however be inflation, for it is written in Revelation 6, that the cost of the ingredients to make a loaf of bread will eventually equal a working mans days wage. This is often the result of inflation or hyperinflation, which is usually brought about through philosopha based political policies.
I read this book a couple of years ago and was appalled by it. I wrote a review for Amazon that I never managed to publish (it’s stuck on my broken down computer), but I basically said the same things. I should really get this fixed.
Its appalling to me that so many people just lap this stuff up when it’s nothing but an exercise in manipulation, coercion, and intellectual dishonesty.
And yet I understand. I was once “kafkatrapped” on a personality type forum, where I was forced to accepting a personality type that I am not. A lot of people ended up getting hurt by the forum culture; maybe they wouldn’t if I had spoken out. So I swore never to allow this to happen again, even if I were to be crucified for my efforts. I see it happening now again, and I will not acquiesce this time. I’m going to oppose this twisted ideology all the way, no matter what.
When ever they attempt to pigeon hole you into this group or that group… you are being categorized by the philosopha who use applied dialectics. These groups are then placed in battle array against each other. This is know as war in antithesis.
People don’t act as a group … they are individuals and act as such …. However the philosopha, want to place blame on a specific group (Thesis Group) to turn another opposite group (Anti Thesis) in violent opposition to the Thesis Group.
The Terms Black and White to indicate humans are one such set of groupings set out by the philosopha using Applied Dialectics. They keep the Black group at war with the White group in order to cause permanent division and hatred. Factually, there are no Black nor White people in the world. Humans range in color from light pink to dark brown (complementary colors in the same spectrum). However, in order to serve the dialectic, opposite terms must be deployed and people placed in groups and stigma attached to those groups. If one person acts the philosopha assign blame for action to the entire group, opposed to the individual who took the action.
This is how Applied Dialectics are used to create deception and ideologically subvert large groups of people. Reasonably dark skinned people don’t hate all light skinned people and vice versa, as there exist too many interracial marriages for that to be a valid point. However, the use of applied dialectics to lay blame against a Thesis group still works.
Simply look at the Police group who irrespective of their racial makeup nationwide, have been identified by the Philosopha as racists against the group of people they call Black….. which is of course completely preposterous and totally unreasonable.
It however shows how effective applied dialectics currently are in America. Until Americans learn who the philosopha are and how Applied Dialectics are used, the are destined to go through more of these philosopha incited riots.
Not to be outdone, the UK has its own version of Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ in the form of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race’. It is very much a case of ‘same circus, different clowns’. Very little is put forward to substantiate selective, contextless (seeing as we’re making up words, I might as well get a piece of the action) historical claims and what is put forward consists of, for the most part, newspaper articles and television programmes. While I suspect some malicious intent behind DiAngelo’s racist rhetoric, I feel the intention is more well-meaning here in the UK.
I saw British actress Emma Watson holding Eddo-Lodge’s book a couple of years ago alongside other pop-culture books that would be considered feminist. The book was also referenced by a British Youtuber as he talked about BLM and privilege. It was strange given he was listing what one should do in order to properly “listen” to PoCs.
Let’s be clear, the UK has issues with race and its own set of systems built to create inherent disadvantages of certain people solely based on race. I may not support all of Dr DiAngelo’s assessments, but let’s be crystal clear… racism happens when instead of creating better communities, nice White folks move at the sign of a Black family moving in down the street. In the US, it was called White flight. They moved to protect the privileges afforded to them because of their color and while they had no issue with Black people, they just weren’t supposed to be here. We have socialized people in the US and the UK and places like Canada to think superiority – how? Think about this, when a Black teen is acting up – he’s called a Thug in the US, what is he called in the UK? When a White teen is acting up – he’s ‘not called anything’, but we describe his actions. Watch your news, If a Black person harms another Black person, here it is called Black on Black crime, what is it called in the UK? When a White person harms another White person (even though FBI data shows more crimes by White people in total), here is is not called by ‘race,’ there is no description of the person, the action may be mentioned, what happens in the UK? I could go on, but i am highlighting that this is part of socializing people by race. You get born into it. We normalize racism into our systems…. White people ‘pretend’ that they can’t see it, can’t believe it..
Actually where and when I grew up the term “thug” was applied to anyone who acted badly, without concern for the color of their skin. You also see it used to refer to the “heavies” in many movies regardless of skin color. The limiting of it to Blacks seems to have occurred as part of the whole gangsta rap thing in the ’80s and ’90s when they appropriated the term as a way to describe a lifestyle. Their appropriation was held up as proper, and the term migrated.
And your idea cuts both ways. How often do you hear about someone who isn’t Black being killed by the police (even though statistically it’s more common)?
I actually think White people are superior to Black people. But the Chinese are superior to Whites. And Ashkenazi Jews are superior to al of the others. (Speaking as a White Irishman).
You are wrong about the Ashkenazi jews being superior
What does it mean for a group to be “superior”?
Does it mean that its members are smarter? nicer? stronger? better looking?
Even if break down “superior” into all the positive traits that can be had, and even they can be objectively measured, and even if we calculate the averages for every group, and even if some group comes up on top in all criteria – for sure many, many of its members will be positioned beneath many, many members of other so-called inferior groups in some or all of the criteria.
In other words – even if there is such a thing as “group superiority” – it is effectively meaningless in the real world outside of philosophical discussions.
This review/smackdown reflects exactly my take on Diangelo’s obvious charlatanism. There is a cesspool that I refer to as the Academic Left, which filters ideas down to the rank-and-file left, and Diangelo is one of its blatantly toxic creatures. (She is peddling her ideological snake oil at the teaching schools. See Walter Williams for commentary on the teaching schools – breeding grounds for mediocrities.) That today’s hubris-filled “progressives” fawn over this book as well as the obvious charlatanism going on in Ta-Nahesi Coates’ work – while going out of their way to ignore the work of black conservatives like Sowell, Williams, Glenn Loury or Jason Riley – tells you plenty about them.
(They don’t even make the effort to smear the black conservatives as one might expect these days – they have decided that ignoring is good enough, that these thinkers can be dismissed as numerically-small-enough anomalies. And they’re taking their behavioral cues – i.e., the refusal to have an honest conversation with opposing opinion – from the aforementioned cesspool.
We all know the growing mountain of evidence of how those cesspool-creatures are systematically destroying inquiry in “higher education.” I use terms like “cesspool creatures” for the sake of accuracy, as these creatures are blatantly intellectually dishonest. Holding bad ideas is one thing; holding onto them dishonestly should be called out for the cesspool-behavior that it is.)
Middle America is right well fed up with this situation, especially when/where the blatant dishonesty is taxpayer-subsidized.
And the mountain of evidence of these pathologies taking over increasingly leftist news media (e.g., CNN, NYT) is now undeniable, their credibility tanking accordingly. The purges and the attrition have driven out the best minds, leaving the slow-mo trainwreck we’ve got now. You have to really strain nowadays, Diangelo-like, to find comparable much less greater bias and disinformation at Fox News. And the Wall Street Journal offers a clearly superior alternative to the failing NYT. (Note that the predictably dishonest leftists belittle Fox viewers, but really don’t have jack on WSJ & its readers, else they’d be mentioning WSJ a lot more. The dynamic here is the same as with the black conservatives they don’t bother ever acknowledging. How is all this not as plain as day to anyone paying attention?)
I wonder if any of the others commenting on this thread have noticed what an echo chamber they are in. Everyone is in absolute agreement that DiAngelo is incorrect and they pick at the edges of her conceit – pretending they have disproven a whole scientific discipline. I don’t have time to write a page for every mistaken sentence in this opinion piece and its sycophantic comments. I will leave you all with this:
1. All human beings are born equal.
2. Race is a construct, created by Whites, to justify the exploitation of POC.
3. Progressives insist on the racial lens because of the disproportionate outcomes that are still caused by systemic racism.
4. “Color blindness“ prevents progress because we then become blind to the inequality.
5. The idea of “meritocracy” allows Whites to believe in their own inherent superiority because of the disproportionate outcomes by race in a “fair system” where the smartest and hardest working people will rise to the top.
6. America is not a meritocracy because if it were, that would make the inferior outcomes for POC in education, employment, housing, wealth, incarceration, healthcare, and life expectancy irrefutable proof positive that Whites must be inherently superior.
7. Racism is systemic though. Making meritocracy a lie.
Science has proven we are all equal.
If you actually studied the science, you would find that your uninformed opinion is just another manifestation of racism- something that you reject, even though you don’t understand it.
8. Which is more likely?
That generations of peer reviewed study and work in the social and biological sciences is wrong? Or that a bunch of fragile White people, with nothing but their own “common sense” are wrong about the American experiment being fair to everyone?
So I guess when Robin DiAngelo checks into a top-notch hotel to get a good night’s rest prior to one of her pricey speaking engagements, she checks in under the name “Francois Dupuis”.
“6. America is not a meritocracy because if it were, that would make the inferior outcomes for POC in education, employment, housing, wealth, incarceration, healthcare, and life expectancy irrefutable proof positive that Whites must be inherently superior.”
Just to pick one. This is a straight up lie. Not all “POC” groups have inferior outcomes. Harvard was just caught discriminating against people of Far East Asian ethnicity because of that group’s superior outcome in education. In fact, their education outcomes are significantly higher than Whites. Also, they have high levels of employment, housing, wealth, extremely low levels of incarceration, and have an above average life expectancy. What is it about these “POCS” that make them so successful even when under the thumb of “systemic racism?” Are they inherently superior?
Chinese and Indian (cultural Hindu) do better than White people in the UK.
You are spot on. There is NO DOUBT of the advantages in this country created simply by White Privilege, creating systems that we get sorted into just by the color of our skin often giving better access to one versus the other. This is where being complicit comes from because rather than acknowledge and give up or share those comforts, it is ignored. Over 80% of our communities are still segregated and funding and racism is able to happen at our zip codes – higher insurance, issues with getting loans, lower community development, reduced healthcare, disappearance of organic stores or healthier living. It’s okay because if I can’t see it, then i can say that it doesn’t exist and off I go to workship in my all White or almost all White Church, private schools, summer camps…… it’s a system designed to create advantages based solely on race.
I suspect that as with all other religious believers you don’t like blasphemy against your high priests. However, I would like to take issue with this “and they pick at the edges of her conceit”. The problem is not the edges it is the substance. I note that you have listed all the arguments that DiAngelo also makes and yet like her you are data free. Let me ask you this, if this applies to all whites and no other races, where is the genetic code evidence that points to this anomaly only effecting people of “white” heritage. As all Whites are infected with this then there must be something in our DNA mustn’t there? I mean if it is a belief or an attitude the likeliness that 100% of any group of humans, randomly selected on skin colour will all share the same belief or attitude must be statistically impossible. For example, some white people like milk products but others don’t, some like heavy rock music but some don’t, some believe snake oil salespeople but most don’t. Give that this is the case, unless it is genetic how can ALL white people hold the same belief in regards to race. If on the other hand, as proposed by DiAngelo (that we all tacitly agree to keep suppressing black people) can you point to the date we all agreed this? It must have been a meeting, or a broadcast or something? Unless of course it was in some secret text like the (debunked) Protocols of the Elders of Zion that we all read. Am I on the right track? It can’t be the bible because we aren’t all Christians, so what could it be? If it is genetic, then that suggests that races can be inferior or superior to each other if they can hold thoughts in their DNA – maybe they could also hold other super powers? I thought we were trying to move away from this idea of the Master Race and the Untermensh. Anyway, happy to see how this works because it does look like the whole evidence is made up by someone at the moment. I do like her “fact” that working class people were not considered to be white until they were given the job of surpressing black people. My ancestors come from rural Ireland. They may have been many things but being “non-white” in a world where black people didn’t really exist until recently was not one of them.
Of course, DiAngelo and Francois have the perfect answer to your question regarding “how and when did all Whites come to be racist?” The answer is simply ‘the system’ created it. Perhaps we aren’t born racist per se, but by the time we can think, ‘the system’ has already molded us in it’s image and programmed us to be racist bots bent on oppressing blacks. “The System” is the catch-all answer that (intentionally) can neither be defined nor validated, and thus, as far as they are concerned, cannot be disputed.
Really useful article, thank you David. I had the sense that much of what was going on in anti-racism int he States, and now in the UK, was fundamentally religious in nature and you’ve helped me to understand why. Great job.
Robin Di Angelo’s book surprised me, because it’s written in such childish language and contains nothing but barely-formed, childish thinking.
I am baffled as to why adults have thought it worth even 5 minutes of their reading time.
It is SOLD OUT on Amazon. This needs to be discussed
Most likely due to purchases in bulk to support institutional “re-education”…ala Maoist cultural revolution. If you have kids in school, and see anything referencing “equity”…the alarm bells should go off.
Totally fascinating, David, thank you. Have you seen Tiger King?
Doc Antle, AKA “Mahamayavi Bhagavan Antle” (the obese, pony-tailed, polygamous golf cart guy) played a very clever trick: he’d travel to DC with tiger cubs and allow members of Congress to play with them, make sure he had it documented in pictures. So cute, who could resist?!
After the fact, the congress members would learn what they’d done would be illegal if the Big Cat Public Safety Act became law. How can you vote to outlaw something you yourself have done in public?
That’s exactly what DiAngelo is doing with “white fragility”: on first hearing the term you think to yourself “Wait, what?! I’m not fragile!” …*without* understanding that rejection of the term actually means “I admit to being a racist”.
It makes it very hard to backtrack when you do learn, because you’ve already committed to rejecting “fragility”.
It’s a tiger trap.
This is great. One slight bone of contention I have is the use of the phrase, ‘Kafkatrap.’ In my mind it is actually a double bind. The concept can be found in Gregory Bateson’s ‘Steps to an ecology of mind,’ in which he outlines this process going on in families where one person has a mental illness, usually schizophrenia.
The process goes as follows (and I’ll use DiAngelo’s ideas in the example):
It is relational and requires at least two people, one being the recipient of the double bind.
The process must occur repeatedly.
There must be a primary negative injunction – ‘If you do not do X, I will punish you.’ : “If, as a white person, you do not admit your racism, I will say that you are racist.”
There is a secondary injunction in contradiction to the first – ‘Do not see me as punitive’ OR ‘The first injunction is a sign of my care and concern for you.’
There may be a third injunction that reinforces this process. In the case of DiAngelo, “Questioning this process is evidence of your inherent racism.”
Once this process is established only a part of it is needed to maintain the relational dynamic – usually the threat of being labelled as racist.
And the relational dynamic – however well-intentioned it might ever have been, whatever sense of moral righteousness or declared commitment to real social understanding involved, whatever chains of sophistic(ated) reasoning got the SJW/canceler there – is indistinguishable from blatant intellectual dishonesty. And in a way it is nothing other than blatant dishonesty – the perpetrators should and do know better than to carry out an abusive relational dynamic like this; it’s plain common sense not to do that, the parallels to witchhunts too blazingly obvious. And that’s how their opposition comes to (rightly) view them as blatantly dishonest, no matter their intentions. At some point not even the intentions can be “good,” since they are overtaken by the intention to bully and manipulate.
Reliance on the “Kafkatrap” logical fallacy puts accusations of white fragility on par with accusations of Witchcraft in 17th-century Salem, MA.
I refuse to play that game. As Captain James T. Kirk said in The Wrath of Khan, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” 🙂
Thanks, ya’ll. Pax.
Agreed…it is all very medieval
It actually comes from Kafka’s book The Trial in which a man’s denial of his crime is used as evidence he committed the crime. Sound familiar.
I hadn’t heard of white fragility before last week, when I read about it on this site.
I’m wondering: are blacks, also, inherently racist? Or, is this something unique to white people?
If we say blacks ARE racist, then I see no reason to treat whites with unique scorn. So, the theory of white fragility must be throw away.
But, suppose we say blacks ARE NOT racist. That means (a) that blacks are inherently different from whites and are, in fact, superior because they do not suffer from the evil of racism. This, itself, is a deeply racist statement. So, if a black person were to draw such a conclusion, they’d by definition be racist, so that’s a contradiction of the premise that blacks are not racist.
So what is a proponent of white fragility to do? They are asserting a fundamental truth, but it’s a truth that’s only accessible to white people, which is a very odd position for someone claiming to not be racist.
I think that’s an excellent point, twm. Critical Race Theory states that objective analysis (or an attempt at such), belief in reason as a guide to truth, and the scientific method of inquiry are all fundamentally “racist” because they are products of “whiteness”.
“Other ways of knowing”, such as storytelling and “lived experience” are “black” “truth alternatives”. In other words, science and reason aren’t “for” black people.
It’s that crazy, that racist.
Your latter guess is the one that is accepted currently by modern critical theorists: the new school of thought is that black people are not capable of racism, because these sophists have redefined racism to mean that it can only be perpetrated by those who (by nature of their race) have more institutional power historically. By this definition, whites are in fact the only ones capable of being racist, as other racial interactions between non-whites and cultural dynamics outside of North America are conveniently ignored. Thus it is not racist to proclaim these things about whites, because it is also literally impossible to be racist towards whites.
Your assertion that this makes non-whites inherently better human beings (by virtue of their race alone) is the other conclusion that is commonly accepted by the same ideologues. This is exactly why the old virtues of individualism and egalitarianism are rejected now in favor identity politics and the pursuit of “equity”.
I agree with you about the strangeness that is Robin DiAngelo, a white woman, being the one to profess all of this (and profit from it personally). You have to wonder about the cognitive dissonance she lives with and how she handles it.
You’re granting too much in the way of intellectual honesty to the likes of Diangelo. The term “racism” now has to mean (and ONLY mean) some structural racialized power dynamic in which – as mandated by the unfalsifiable “theory” – it’s the whites who oppress the blacks. If this unilateral redefinition of “racism” sounds like Newspeak, that’s because it is.
This is a very carefully constructed Kafka trap, based on deliberate, but intellectually vacuous circular reasoning (tails we win, heads you lose)…in fact, there is no rationality in it, except that devised internally by its adherents as a means to power…in the end, that is ALL it is, and thus boring…but it also insidiously and perniciously dangerous, since it has no basis in objectivity. It is a cultish quasi-religion right out of Bizarro World…scientology has more basis in reality than this tripe. I watch these sniveling little white protestors, particularly the women, and I am reminded of Manson groupies.
Don’t know about Blacks being racist but when a Chinese ethnic relation-by-marriage of mine was considered to be a Filipina she went ‘ballistic’. Filipinas are servants!
White Fragility = Emotional BDSM.
Robin DeAngelo is the Dominatrix of Oppression 🙂
It’s worse than that, she’s a sub that good from the bottom.